Chronicles of the Uruk-Hai
by Osheen Nevoy
Summary: This revisionist tale explores certain key battles of the Ring War from the viewpoint of a company of Fighting Uruk-Hai of Isengard. The story is inspired by the chapter "The Uruk-Hai" in Tolkien's Two Towers, especially by the character of Ugluk. Features Mauhur, Ugluk, Lugdush, original Uruk-Hai characters; cameos by Eomer, Saruman & others. Ch. 4 posted: "In Saruman's Army."
1. Chapter 1: Mauhur and His Lads

_**Chronicles of the Uruk-Hai**_

 _Author's Note:_

In his Appendix F of _The Lord of the Rings_ , Tolkien tells us that "Orc is the form of the name that other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan," and that "uruk" is the equivalent name in the Black Speech. Although Tolkien also states that "uruk" was "applied as a rule only to the great soldier-orcs," I have decided that this is a misunderstanding on the part of a scholar unfamiliar with (and unsympathetic to) Orcish language and culture. In this work I am using "Uruk" as the singular and "Uruk-Hai" (Orc-People, Orc-Folk) as the plural to refer to all of the peoples generically referred to in Tolkien's works as Orcs. Distinguishing between the different groups of Uruk-Hai are descriptions such as "Fighting Uruk-Hai" and "Cave Uruk-Hai of the mountains."

For readers wondering about the use of telepathy in this tale, please see my additional author's note at the end of this chapter. Translations of various terms marked with asterisks will also be found in that note.

I have, naturally, no claim to any of the peoples, characters or events created by J.R.R. Tolkien, and I'm not making any money from this. I am, however, having a great deal of fun exploring an alternate and (to my way of thinking) more realistic view of the peoples Tolkien knew as the foul, brutal and barbarous Orcs.

 _ **Chapter One : **_

_**Mauhúr and His Lads**_

… _there's one thing the fine fellows don't know! Mauhúr and his lads are in the forest, and they should turn up any time now._

—Uglúk, "The Uruk-Hai," Chapter 3 of _The Two Towers_ by J.R.R. Tolkien

 _There must have been orc-women. But in stories that seldom if ever see the Orcs except as soldiers of armies in the service of the evil lords we naturally would not learn much about their lives._

—J.R.R. Tolkien, 1963

* * *

 _Mauhúr! Need reinforcements. Crossing the downs from Great Falls, along the river to the forest._

As he ran with his troop across the plain of Rohan, Mauhúr Son of Uglúk thought of that mental message from his father, again and again.

He did not believe Uglúk was in serious danger; not from the sound of the message. But Uglúk wouldn't send for reinforcements except in genuine need. He was hardly one to panic. Mauhúr thought that the White Wizard or the Dark Lord himself would panic before his father did.

He had felt no fear in Uglúk's message. The chief emotion he had felt from Uglúk was annoyance.

Still, orders were orders. And if Uglúk felt the need to call for reinforcements at all, he'd expect Mauhúr and the other lads to leg it double-quick. So Mauhúr kept his troop running at a good pace. It wasn't the fastest speed they could manage in desperate need; just a steady, league-eating run they could keep up for days on end.

Keep it up for days on end, they did. Uglúk's thought-message had come when they were almost all the way back to Isengard, near the end of the day after the battle at the Fords of Isen. Mauhúr had sent their most seriously wounded warrior, Kharorod, to the Wizard's fortress with the news that they were reporting to their commander Uglúk, on his orders. The rest of them had set out for a pleasant night's run, feeling fresh and ready to take on all the horse-boys of Rohan.

They had rested well the night before, and had fed even better. On the bank of the Isen at the edge of Nan Curunír, Mauhúr's lads had eaten together their victory feast in honour of that day's battle.

Mauhúr had no real knowledge if the battle would count as a victory for their side. That would be for the strategists and history-writers to decide. But whatever the chronicles eventually had to say about it all, he believed their own small segment of the battle was an unquestioned victory.

They had slain or put to flight all of the Whiteskins who'd faced them. Several of their troop had distinguished themselves in single combat, from the glimpses Mauhúr had of them while he was in the thick of his own combats. And in all of that, only one of their own warriors had been slain. As far as Mauhúr was concerned, that was what victory looked like.

Besides, a rumour was going 'round that the son of the King of Rohan had been killed in the battle. If that turned out to be true, it was assuredly a triumph for their side, no matter if the battle itself ranked as victory or as loss.

When they withdrew from the battlefield, heading upriver from the ford, Mauhúr's troop took with them the body of their last opponent slain in single combat. Mauhúr had witnessed that Man's fall. He was cut down at the water's edge by Jaddain, who had been Mauhúr's dear friend since the time of their earliest childhood memories.

Naturally, the body of one conquered foeman was not sufficient to feed 39 Uruk-Hai warriors. That need was met with the flesh of the horse they captured: the steed of Jaddain's defeated foe. But the Fighting Uruk-Hai did not feast on their enemy's flesh for sustenance alone. The ritual Feast of Victory honoured their bravery and achievements—and the bravery and achievements of the warrior whose carcase they consumed.

Roasting the flesh of the Man in the same cookfire as that of his horse caused many a predictable joke. Inspired by the love that the straw-heads notoriously felt for their steeds, Mauhúr's lads cracked numerous jibes on the poetic rightness of horse-boy and horse getting cooked together.

With a brief but sharp rebuke, Mauhúr ended the joking. He knew damned well that it wouldn't take long for the jokes to get far worse. This feast was the first over which he'd presided without his father and other older warriors being present. He was going to do it right.

The lads acquiesced to his will with relative good grace. It cost them only a small amount of struggling to regain their solemnity of mien. And if any more jokes were cracked, at least his fellows had the sense to utter them outside of Mauhúr's hearing.

Mauhúr and Jaddain had shared their enemy's heart. The heart was Jaddain's right as the warrior who had struck him down, as it was Mauhúr's right as the commander of their company. A third portion of the heart they gave to the wounded Kharorod, hoping the ritual power of the gift could aid his healing.

Though of course he would not speak of it, Mauhúr's thoughts were grim regarding Kharorod's chances. Kharorod bore his injury without complaint, as every one of the Fighting Uruk-Hai should do. But Mauhúr had seen the bloody spittle Kharorod hawked out now and then, when he thought no one was watching him. His commander dreaded that the sword-slash across his chest had nicked one of his lungs.

Kharorod had volunteered to take the first shift on guard duty that night, as they camped along the bank of the Isen. Far later in the night, when Kharorod should have been long asleep, Mauhúr had seen him, sitting up against a boulder and gazing at the stars.

Mauhúr thought he could guess why Kharorod had not lain down that night. Kharorod feared that if he lay flat, blood from his lung would pool where it should not, and it would prove the harder for him to go on unhindered on the morrow.

When they left their campsite that morn, to march on to Isengard, they had left the severed head of their enemy, planted there on his own spear. The wind had woken with the dawn. When Mauhúr paused and looked back, he saw the pale hair of the Man of Rohan streaming out behind the head, like a proud banner borne aloft by the wind. Even so did the hair of the horse warriors fly in the wind as they rode, singing, into battle. Mauhúr smiled at the sight, and in his thoughts he bade their foe farewell. It was fitting to leave him thus, on guard over the land: the last of the honours paid to him by his conquerors. Although, Mauhúr knew well, the horse-boy would have been glad to avoid all of the honours they'd paid him.

Now Uglúk had summoned them, to meet some mysterious need that set Mauhúr to pondering. And as he ran with his lads all about him and with Jaddain at his side, Mauhúr had more time than he wanted, to mull unwelcome thoughts.

When this mission of Uglúk's was achieved—whatever the mission might be—and they came home to the hills above Isengard, Mauhúr's most dreaded duty awaited him. He must go to the house of Tsas, their warrior slain at the ford. He must bring Tsas' family the news of their son and brother's death.

Against his will, Mauhúr rubbed his neck, thinking of the arrow that had skewered Tsas' windpipe. He thought of the young Uruk slamming down into the water; lying there with that startled look on his face and with blood welling from his mouth.

 _In the throat,_ Mauhúr thought. _Tsas_ would _have to die from an arrow-wound in the throat._ It was an ironic end for the warrior who had been the best singer of all their troop.

With his voice strong and clear as a trumpet's-call, Tsas had pulled the singing of the rest of them together. He had even managed to keep them more-or-less on key. Mauhúr thought, _We are the Fighting Uruk-Hai, but without him we certainly won't be the singing Uruk-Hai. Not unless his ghost comes back to lead us in our war songs._

Mauhúr grinned as another thought hit him.

 _Are we all going to die as Tsas did,_ he wondered, _struck in the body parts most ironically appropriate for each of us?_

With a sidelong glance over at Jaddain, he thought, _If that's so, then Jad will have to perish from a mortal wound in the private parts._

Not that any of them had much opportunity to utilize those parts, as yet. But Jaddain was superbly confident that when he did have the opportunity, he would prove to be of unrivalled skill in their use. And, to be fair, most of the Urukeen* of the Five Villages seemed to share Jad's opinion. There was never any shortage of damsels eager to flutter their eyelashes right back at him when Jaddain fluttered his eyelashes at them. An unending troop of them stood ready to growl sweet nothings with him, whenever a chance presented itself.

Even Mauhúr's little sister Sargil had taken to looking at Jaddain differently, of late. These days she tended to favour him with a new sort of smouldering, speculative gaze. It seemed she agreed with the other Urukeen, that he might just be a good catch. Before, she had viewed her brother's best friend with a mixture of disdain and rivalry, as her main competitor for Mauhúr's attention.

Some of the trend of Mauhúr's thoughts must have grown visible on his face, for Jaddain asked him, "What are you grinning about?"

Mauhúr decided to spare him the speculation about deadly wounds to his privates. Instead he told his friend, "I was thinking that when you've distinguished yourself in a few more battles, you'll be ready for promotion to the main company. And for marriage, too, of course."

As they ran onward, Jaddain studied him with a pleased but surprised-looking smile. "Really?" Jaddain questioned. "Do you really think so?"

"I do. Why, do not you believe you've done well?"

"I do, but … so have many others."

"Well, we will all have the chance to show our quality in the battles ahead. And there should be many of those." Mauhúr went on, "If you continue to perform as you did at the fords, I will gladly speak for your promotion. Or perhaps not gladly," he added, "since your promotion will mean I'll need to keep the rest of these pups in line without your help."

Jaddain argued, "Seems to me you're the one most fit for promotion and marriage of any of us."

Mauhúr gave a snort. "Maybe. But when I get promoted, who's going to take command of this lot? I can't think of anyone who's ready for that—except maybe for you. But then," he said with a sly grin, "who knows how long it would be before you could marry? It'd be cruel to make some poor, yearning maiden wait that much longer before she can sink her claws into you."

"Too right!" Jad exclaimed, grinning back. "Not to mention being cruel to me. How much more blue do you want my balls to get?"

"It might be entertaining to find out how blue they _can_ get."

"No," said Jaddain, looking innocent, "you wouldn't do that to me. You're my commander. It's your job to tend to the welfare of all your troops."

That comment landed the burden of command squarely back on Mauhúr's shoulders. He felt himself sag with the imagined weight of it as he said flatly, "Yes. It is."

Jaddain knew well that he had blundered. He also clearly knew that further words would make it worse. They ran on in more-or-less companionable quiet.

Mauhúr's thoughts trudged back again to the need that lay ahead of him, to pay his respects to Tsas' family. It would be only the third time he had performed this most unwelcome of duties as commander of the Five Villages' Uruki* troop.

He had accompanied his father numerous times on such grim visits, all the while as he was growing up. Nothing had prepared him for the dark, painful difference he felt when he was the one under whose command the warriors had died.

Several times over, his thoughts worked their way through what he might say to Tsas' mother, brothers and sisters, when finally he paid that visit. On his third time 'round of seeking the best possible words, his thoughts drew up short again at his earlier speculation: the theory of their warriors being afflicted with mortal wounds in the most ironically fitting spots.

 _If that happens to me,_ he thought, _I'm certain to get the fatal blow to my head. Father always tells me thinking is both my greatest skill and my greatest weakness._

They ran with only the briefest of rest breaks throughout that first night, the day, and into the next night. As the middle of the second night neared, Mauhúr judged that his lads had earned a more substantial rest. He'd had no further message from Uglúk, and Mauhúr had no reason to believe that desperate haste was called for. They made camp at a point where a troop of boulders reared up out of the plain.

Settling down to sleep in the lee of one of the boulders, Mauhúr found himself wondering again about his father's mysterious mission.

All he knew was what Uglúk had told Mauhúr and his mother, on the day he set forth from their village. He had declared, with a self-satisfied grin, "The White Wizard has a task beyond ordinary need, so he sends for us to accomplish it. There is some weapon of the enemy; a thing that may turn the tide of the war. We are sent to fetch it and bring it to him. So you see," Uglúk continued in a proud tone, as he gently ran one claw along his primary wife's cheek, "it matters not how many new weapons the White Hand has at his command. We are still the spear he chooses when his aim must prove true."

Mauhúr's troop set forth with the dawn and ran through another day. In all the course of their journey through the plains, they had not sighted any force of horse-boys. Mauhúr guessed the most of them were likely licking their wounds from the battle at the fords, and perhaps regrouping to mount an effective defence of their fortresses to the south. Yet he knew those swift riders could appear as suddenly as if they sprang to life from the very grasses themselves.

He aimed his force toward the forest, to reach the cover of its eaves as soon as might be. Once they gained that shelter, there would be little risk of the straw-heads spotting them and making trouble before they met up with Uglúk.

The sunset again was closing in behind them as they drew nigh the first outlying trees. Loping easily along just within the forest's edge, the Uruki troop was now safe enough from any horse-breeders' gaze.

Darkness settled into the woods, but it made no difference to their pace. He and his fellows did not have the night vision of the Cave Uruk-Hai of the mountains, but their sight was more than good enough to handle a star-and-moonlit night like this. Mauhúr began to think of sending a message to his father, to learn where Uglúk wanted them to rendezvous—

—And a message from Uglúk sliced into his mind.

 _Mauhúr! Where are you?_

Mauhúr stumbled slightly from the impact of his father's thought. He grated to Jaddain, beside him, "Jad, you lead the troop for a while. I'll catch up with you."

Jaddain nodded. As he called out, "All right, lads, you follow me, now," Mauhúr slowed his own pace to barely over a walk.

He focused fiercely on sending the thought to his father, _Just under the eaves of the forest, from the south._

 _Good._ Uglúk's thought message paused then, as though he took a deep breath before continuing, though of course he did not need to, with this manner of speech. _Horse-boys have us surrounded, on the knoll north of the river. Too many for us to break through. Reckon they plan on attacking at dawn. If you strike in the night, we can hit 'em from two sides at once._

Mauhúr fought to control his jolt of excitement, hope and dread. He thought in answer, _Right. We'll be there as soon as we can._

Now he pushed forward double-quick, leaping over stumps and fallen trees and ploughing through the smaller bushes. When he reached Jaddain and the others running as the spearpoint of their troop, he ordered, "Pull up."

The Uruki troop clustered about him. Mauhúr announced, "Our fellows are in trouble. They're on the knoll by the riverbank, surrounded by horse-boys. Must be a lot of the straw-heads; Uglúk says there's too many for them to get through without being slaughtered. That's where we come in. We have to reach the knoll before the enemy strikes at dawn, and take 'em by surprise."

There came answering growls and nods from Mauhúr's lads. He went on, "This isn't just any battle. Succeed in this, and we save our families and our friends. Fail, and every household in the Five Villages will be in mourning. You reckon you pups can handle it?"

The chorus of cheers, growls and battle cries that followed sounded respectably ferocious. Mauhúr grinned. "That's what I like to hear—but once we get moving again, I don't want to hear any more of it until we've jumped the straw-heads. Time for us to be fast and _silent_ , now. You got that? All it takes is for one of those fine fellows to get wind of us too soon, and maybe we'll have condemned every one of our warriors to death."

From what he could see of the boys' faces, Mauhúr thought they seemed eager instead of afraid. Or rather, they had their fear locked away deep inside of them, the same as he had done with his own fear.

"Tonight, it's up to us. Tonight, we have the chance to save our fathers, grandfathers, uncles, brothers, friends. They are counting on us. Can we save them?"

The boys answered with one last deafening round of cheers; cries of "Yes!" and promises of what they would do to the Whiteskins. Mauhúr shared a quick glance and a smile with Jaddain. Then he ordered, "Let's go."

The night grew colder as they jogged on through the woods, agonisingly picking their way around the most noise-making obstructions in their path. Now Mauhúr wished they did have some gimlet-eyed cave-dwelling Uruk among them, to guide them past the perils of all the treacherous twigs that could snap underfoot.

Mauhúr thought it had got darker, too; just precisely when some additional light would have been of most use to them. He guessed the moon had been swallowed up in cloud, and he cursed their luck.

 _Although,_ he told himself, _the lack of moon may make it take longer for the straw-heads to spot us. Not to mention those demon horses of theirs. People say those horses' sight is as sharp as any Cave Uruk's._

When mist came creeping around the trees, Mauhúr knew they were near the river. Sure enough, before long the ground followed a downward slope and the River Entwash trickled along ahead of them.

Mauhúr halted. "Get a drink, everyone," he whispered the order to those around him, "and fill up your flasks if you need to. Pass the word to the others. We won't have the chance to fill up again later. I'm betting we have some hot work ahead of us."

He followed his own advice and scrambled down the riverbank. After a couple of drinks from his cupped hands, he topped up his flask and then rubbed water over his face. Doing so, he realized he heard something beyond the quiet gurgle of the river.

Ahead of them, out there on the plain, he heard the neighing of horses.

"We're here, lads," Mauhúr hissed. "Come on, now. As silently as wights."

He guessed wights would have made less noise than they did in wading across the shallow river. But the noise didn't seem enough to raise the hackles of the horse-boys—or of their horses.

Barely a furlong from Entwash's bank, Mauhúr and his troop crept to the edge of the trees. They lay peering through the dark, striving to learn the positioning of friends and foes.

Mauhúr could make out the darker mass of the hillock where he knew Uglúk and the others were encamped. All around the base of the knoll, little watch-fires gleamed, sparks of gold and red that rendered still blacker all the surrounding darkness. Mauhúr judged that a dozen or so feet divided each fire from its nearest neighbour. The watch-fires cast scant light, but gradually his eyes and mind pieced together what he saw.

Repeatedly, glimpses of the watch-fire nearest him were blocked for an instant from his sight. He added that sight to the all-but-silent creak and jingle of horse-tack that he heard, and the occasional neigh.

The horse-boys were riding. They rode around and around that knoll as though they were conducting some foul magic ritual, like a grim patrol of spectres awaiting the moment to seize their victims' souls.

 _Just you wait, my fine friends,_ Mauhúr told them in his thoughts, _your spell is not complete yet. I'm afraid it will be interrupted before it's finished._

The horsemen were riding outside of their circle of fires, to avoid becoming targets for the Uruk archers on the hill. They made slightly better targets for the archers among Mauhúr's lads, but still he judged the targets were not clear enough. The dark was too thick about them; the archers would miss too many intended victims and would only succeed in announcing their presence to the enemy. No; the Uruki needed to creep as close they could and launch their attack before the straw-heads got the first whiff of them.

Mauhúr thought, _Or before their horses get a whiff of us. How close can we get to them before the cursed brutes sniff us out?_

At least the air was still. There was not the faintest breath of wind to waft their scent to the horses' nostrils.

Mauhúr closed his eyes as he sent his thought to Uglúk, _We're here, Father. At the edge of the trees._

Uglúk's thought answered him almost at once, rich with grim amusement. _Welcome to the party, Son. Get your boys in position and strike whenever you like. When you make your move, we'll make ours._

Mauhúr thought back to his father, _Right._

His gestures and hissed-out orders, passed along by those near him to their fellows further down the line of warriors, set their troop into motion. The Uruki of the Five Villages began worming their way through the grasses, closer and closer to the shadowy horsemen circling in the fire-broken darkness.

The smell of the grass was so heavy in Mauhúr's nose, he knew a sudden ludicrous dread that he or one of the other lads might sneeze.

 _Sha!_ he thought. _Come off it, will you?_ _That sort of thing only happens in tales._

Abrupt rustling ahead of him sounded so loud to his tension-sharpened hearing that he feared it would give the game away. The rustling dwindled into nothing. He told himself it was nothing but a field mouse, rudely interrupted in its nightly quest for food.

They had almost reached their goal. Just the briefest of crawls more, and the troop would be within an easy leap of hurling themselves on the Riders.

Ahead of Mauhúr and some ways along to his right, sounds erupted. He heard the startled snort of a horse and a yell from the horse's Rider. There came the ring of a sword being drawn, the whirr and thud of an arrow, a scream and then pounding hooves. Then a ghastly shriek tore through the air. He had no doubt it was the death cry of whoever had uttered it.

Mauhúr flung out his arms to both sides in a "hold still" gesture to his troops. Few of them, he knew, would see it, but he counted on their discipline to make each of them stop when the warrior beside him stopped—that, and their good sense that should halt them from crawling blindly into whatever was going on ahead.

 _That wasn't one of us,_ he thought. _The sounds were too far forward; it was inside the circle of horsemen._

Perhaps some luckless Uruk from up on the knoll had made a lone attempt to break through the straw-heads' circle …

Shouts came from the nearby horsemen. Mauhúr guessed they were questions, though being in the Riders' unlovely tongue, they sounded like nothing but babbling. Suddenly, more shouting broke out at the top of the knoll. And these shouts, Mauhúr could understand.

Unmistakably, he heard his father's voice, roaring out, "Dungfilth! Apes! You had one job to do! One! To keep them from getting away!"

A jumble of wails, squeals and howls answered Uglúk's bellow. With stabbing dismay, Mauhúr realized, _No way Uglúk's ready to lead a charge through the enemy; not if he's up there tearing somebody a new one._

He raised his arms to gesture his troop to pull back. Before he could make that gesture, the remainder of their plan fell apart.

One of their lads must have crawled in closer than the rest of them; that, or else one of the cursed horses had keener senses than its fellows. From over to Mauhúr's left came another snort from a horse; another shout from a Rider. The Man yelled out a lengthy string of words. One of those words, Mauhúr felt certain, was "Orcs."

If they withdrew now, it would turn into a rout—and all chance of a surprise attack would be lost. Mauhúr thought there was just one rational choice to make, and he made it. He sprang to his feet, drawing his sword, and roared out, "Fighting Uruk-Hai! Attack!"

With a fury that he thought ought to turn the straw-heads' blood to ice, the Uruki battle-cries answered.

As so often happened to him, Mauhúr's left-handedness gave him unexpected advantages in combat. This time it combined perfectly with the direction the horsemen were riding, from the attackers' right to their left. Mauhúr leapt for the horse and Rider that had just passed him. With his left hand he drove his sword into the horse's neck. With his right he seized the Rider and dragged him off his horse.

Uruk and Man plummeted together, accompanied by the horse-boy's yell of outrage and then his wheezing grunt as they hit the ground. The wild hooves of the wounded horse were now a danger to both of them, but Mauhúr guessed the beast would be well-trained enough that it wouldn't trample its own master.

The straw-head struggled helplessly to rid himself of Mauhúr's weight. Mauhúr had him well and truly trapped. The sword at his belt was pinned beneath his attacker, and his spear was far out of reach, strapped to his saddle. Running low on options, the Man grabbed hold of Mauhúr's sword-arm and fought to forestall the deadly stroke.

Mauhúr laughed at his opponent's unimpressive grip. He told the Rider, in the Common Tongue, "My little sister fights harder than you do, Whiteskin."

Yelling out something, Mauhúr's enemy produced a dagger from somewhere, possibly from up his sleeve. Mauhúr barely glimpsed it as the faintest flash in the dim light. But he knew from the way the Man moved that the dagger strike was coming at him.

He yanked his sword-arm free and swung to parry the dagger's blow. He dealt with more than just the dagger. His sword sliced through the horseman's wrist, sending hand and dagger flying.

Mauhúr made short work of his foe after that. He plunged his sword through, from under the Man's chin up into his brain. The Rider died while he was still screaming from the loss of his hand.

Now Mauhúr had the dead Man's enraged horse to deal with. The injured beast charged at Mauhúr the instant he stood up from its master's body. He sidestepped its first rush. Then, as it reared, he leaped at it again. Risking the blows from its pummelling hooves, he got in close and drove his sword up into the monster's chest.

That finished the brute, and Mauhúr jumped away in time to avoid being hit by the body as it fell. Unfortunately, the animal toppled onto the side where its Rider's spear was strapped. Mauhúr had thought of helping himself to the spear, but there wasn't time now to shift the horse's body to retrieve it. Anyhow, the weight of the horse might well have splintered the spear's shaft.

From up on the hill, Mauhúr heard his father's voice bellowing, "Uruk-Hai! To me! We'll break through to the trees!" Mauhúr grinned at that, but he couldn't spare any of his attention for how things might be going for his father. His own next combat was going on beside him.

The warrior just to the left of him was Gûlvar, almost the youngest member of their troop. Gûlvar's inexperience was betraying him. He had taken on another Rider and the Man's demon horse, but he clearly dreaded launching himself into range of the beast's hooves and teeth. The horseman charged him at a gallop, spearpoint levelled at Gûlvar's chest.

The young Uruki sidestepped and took the spear's blow in his shield. Everything got messy from there.

The spearpoint stuck in the shield. The horse and Rider's charge dragged Gûlvar along with them. The kid had his shield strapped to his forearm—too tightly, Mauhúr guessed—and in the moment's chaos he couldn't figure out how to get it off him.

Mauhúr didn't wait to see how this conflict might play itself out. As the horse-boy pulled up his mount from its charge, Mauhúr jumped them from behind. He got his right arm around the Rider's neck and at the same moment attempted to plunge his sword into the neck of the horse.

He misjudged that thrust and the sword glanced off some armoured segment of the horse's tack. Before Mauhúr could bring his sword to bear on the Rider himself, young Gûlvar leaped into the fight again. The youngster had managed to yank his shield free of the spear, and now he sprang at the horseman. He must have found some armour-free spot in which to stab the Man, from the sound of the Rider's grunt of pain.

Between them, it should have been easy for Mauhúr and Gûlvar to finish their wounded foe. Before they could do so, more hoofbeats pounded at them from behind. Mauhúr suddenly felt as though his left shoulder had been struck by a battering ram.

The wounded Rider he was still clinging to wrenched around and hurled Mauhúr off him. Just able to get his feet under him in time, Mauhúr landed in a crouch, in the middle of a maelstrom of murderous hooves.

 _Time to use my shield, now,_ he thought. He had a lot more practise in manoeuvring the thing than young Gûlvar did, and it took him just one easy move to shrug it from his right shoulder and hold it gripped in front of him. He didn't know if Gûlvar was still standing, and he didn't have the chance to find out, because now he had two Riders' spearpoints coming at him at once.

Beyond the nearby yells and hoofbeats, he heard other sounds. Somewhere, one of the horse-boys shouted out a long chain of words, in a tone of command. That shout was followed by a call from one of their horns.

He did not learn at once what those orders signified. He could focus only on deflecting spearpoints with sword and shield, slashing his sword at Riders and horses, and hopping about to avoid getting trampled.

The horse to his left—the horse of the Man whom Gûlvar had wounded—suddenly screamed and plummeted to the ground. The wounded horseman flung himself off his beast.

Maúhur swung at him. The Man awkwardly parried with his spear shaft and Mauhúr's sword sliced the shaft in two.

In the next instant, the other Rider yelled something and reached down toward his comrade. The injured Rider managed to drag himself up onto his companion's horse. Turning his now double-burdened steed, the second horse-boy started away at the best pace the animal could manage.

Mauhúr exchanged a weary grin with young Gûlvar. "Good work, kid," Mauhúr told him. He figured the lad had made up for his shaky start in this combat by wounding that Rider and then cutting down his horse.

They had no time for further words, and no time to look for other combats to join. The meaning of that order and the horn call became suddenly obvious.

Mauhúr thought, _Dawn must be getting close_. He could see more clearly than he had just moments before. In that vague pre-dawn light, he saw that the horsemen who'd been encircling the hillock were now heading further up the slope. They were closing in their line, he guessed grimly, with the aim of stopping Uglúk's force from breaking through. But more grim by far was the sight of a second wave of horsemen, rounding the base of the hill and galloping straight toward Mauhúr and his lads.

Wildly Mauhúr realised, _There's more of them than we thought! Did Uglúk even know they had this troop in reserve?_

Slinging his shield onto his shoulder again, he yanked up his conch shell horn from the baldric at his side and blew two quick blasts. He followed that by shouting at the top of his lungs, "Uruki! To me!"

A satisfying number of their warriors came bounding through the grasses toward them. He saw no sense in trying to make a count of them now, but he thought it was safe to say that they hadn't lost many.

They hadn't lost many yet.

As the other Uruki drew near—and the fresh troop of horse-boys drew near to them, as well—Mauhúr commanded Gûlvar, "Help me flip this horse over."

The kid probably wondered what his commanding officer was up to, shoving around a dead horse while a disturbing number of Whiteskins came galloping for them, but he sensibly did not ask. Besides, the answer was soon clear. They heaved on the body of the horse whose master Mauhúr had killed, until it shifted enough to reveal the spear strapped to its saddle. Mauhúr whistled in pleased surprise when he saw that the horse's weight hadn't broken the spear.

He pulled the spear free and hefted it appreciatively, enjoying the balance of it. He thought, _Feels good not to be on the receiving end of one of these things, for a change._

With the lads now clustering around him, Mauhúr went back to shouting out orders. "Form a shield wall! Anyone got bow and arrows, now's the time to use them! Archers, your job's to shoot down as many of these bastards as possible. The rest of us, our job's to shield the archers. We stick together. Nobody runs, you hear me? You turn and run, that gives these horse-fuckers their best chance to skewer you."

The wave of horsemen smashed into them. Mauhúr thought it a pretty good accomplishment that their hastily thrown-together shield wall didn't shatter at the first collision.

Since only he of all the Uruki had a spear, they didn't have much chance to keep the enemy at more than swords'-length away. All around him, swords flailed wildly, holding their foemen's spear points at bay. Arrows started singing through the cold pre-dawn air—their own arrows and the arrows of their enemy.

A thought-message from Uglúk broke into his mind.

 _You've got to pull back. There's too many for you to take them now._

 _Thanks!_ he thought in reply. _I'm coming to the same conclusion._

 _We'll have another chance,_ Uglúk told him _. When they strike at dawn, we'll strike them._

"All right, boys," Mauhúr shouted. "We're pulling back, but steadily! Calmly! We're backing up to the trees. Archers, keep on firing! Everyone, stay together! First one I see turn his back, I'll kill him before these manure-shovellers can get to him!"

As they started inching their painfully slow way across the field, it struck him that they resembled a hedgehog facing off against a Warg.

 _No,_ he thought, _we've got to be more than a hedgehog. At least let's be a porcupine. At least let's make sure our quills give the Warg something to remember us by._

Amidst all the shouts and clangs, thunderous hoofbeats and whirring arrows, he could barely pick out any individual sounds. But one sound did come through clearly to him. With a sickening, wet _thunk_ , a thrown spear buried itself in the face of Jebe, one of the archers to his right. Mauhúr glanced over to see the spear quivering there, its point driven deep into Jebe's eyes. As the archer started toppling backward, Mauhúr roared, "Someone take his bow and quiver and start using them _now_! And somebody, grab that spear!"

His orders were obeyed as they kept on shuffling toward the trees, leaving Jebe's crumpled body behind them. Stepping into place at Mauhúr's right was Jaddain, brandishing the spear that dripped black with Jebe's blood.

They were making some impact on their foe. Not as much impact as he wished they would make, but some. He saw one Rider topple with an arrow through his jaw. He desperately hoped that the occasional higher-pitched screams he heard came from dying horse-boys, not from their own warriors.

"We're almost to the trees," Jaddain grated.

"Yeah," he grunted back. Raising his voice to reach all of their troop, he yelled, "All right, boys! All archers will fire as one. Give 'em one last volley, then we'll leg it into the woods. On my order—wait for it—fire!"

In the instant the arrows sprang from their bows, he bellowed, " _Now_ run! Up the river! Meet at the big oak!"

The lads pelted like deer into the shelter of the trees. Mauhúr and Jaddain were the last two to turn and run.

As they raced into the forest, he thought, _It's a safe bet none of those blond buggers know our language. If they think we're just on the run, hopefully they won't keep on troubling their pretty little heads about us._

The plan seemed to have worked. By ones and twos the Uruki reached their meeting point, a spot a short ways upstream where a vast, gnarled oak on the northern bank spread its branches across to canopy the other shore. Mauhúr ordered two of their archers, "Khadan and Boran, you two stay on guard. Head back a bit down the river; keep your eyes and ears open for any sign the horse-lovers are following us." He didn't think there was much risk of that, but it would be damned embarrassing if they were lolling about on the riverbank and the Riders of Rohan popped up like boils on their arses.

"We're going back into combat soon," he told the others. "Likely at dawn. Have some breakfast while we're waiting. Take a swig of rak* too, if you want; we'll all of us be needing some fire in our bellies."

As the troop started munching their rations of dried horse-meat and rye bread, Mauhúr took his first good post-skirmish look at Jaddain's face. He whistled softly at the realisation that his friend was missing one half of his right tusk. Its point had been neatly cut off; from a sword blow, by the look of it.

Mauhúr thought that had to be the strangest freak battlefield injury he'd seen. What were the odds that the blow would be deflected by Jaddain's tusk instead of just slicing onward through his jaw?

"You all right?" Mauhúr asked him.

Jaddain ruefully stuck out his tongue to lick his truncated tusk. "Battered but unbowed," he answered. "You?"

"I'm fine. I think." Only now did he remember the blow to his shoulder while he'd been hanging onto that horse-boy's back. He reached around to investigate and found that his left shoulder-plate had acquired a noticeable dent. "One of them took a poke at me, but I guess it glanced off. Nice to see the armour doing its job."

Mauhúr hesitated an instant to steel himself for his next order. "Jad, go 'round and find out for me who we've lost." He glanced down at the spear Jaddain was still holding, and added, "In addition to Jebe."

Jaddain also gazed at the spear in his hand. He nodded and said, "Right."

While Jad was on that melancholy errand, Mauhúr too went among the troops, checking the extent of their injuries. What he found was heartening: only a few arrow, sword or spear wounds to arms and legs, and no one was even close to being incapacitated. None of the injured lads had any difficulty tending to their hurts; they matter-of-factly rubbed ointment into the wounds and then turned their attention to breakfast.

Mauhúr was leaning against the big oak, gnawing a strip of horse jerky, when the solemn-faced Jaddain returned. The commander of the Uruki stood up straight again and stashed the remnants of the jerky in the pouch at his belt. He asked Jaddain quietly, "Well?"

"It looks like we've lost seven," was Jaddain's equally quiet answer. "Jebe, of course. Dawil fell in the retreat; Tülki says he saw Dawil fall with an arrow in his face. Then there are five others unaccounted for: Üneg, Bürkit, Bult, Juldiz and Khad."

"Bürkit and Bult both?" Mauhúr asked. "Damn it." That was probably the worst loss he would have to report to any family thus far, since Bürkit and Bult were brothers. They were the only sons of their family, except for their half-brother who was still a babe in arms.

Mauhúr held back a sigh. "Thank you," he told Jaddain. He thought, _To think that just a little while ago I tore myself up over needing to speak with_ one _slain warrior's family!_

There was no point at all in brooding on their current list of slain—considering that soon enough, that list was almost certain to grow longer. He took a moment's refuge in the distraction provided by Jaddain's bizarrely sliced-off tusk.

"That really was cutting it close," he remarked, stepping closer to examine the tooth in question. "Good thing you've got such over-sized tusks."

Jaddain delivered his standard reply, "They're not over-sized, they're generously developed."

"Of course they are," Mauhúr answered with a grin. It was an old and well-worn conversation topic between them, revolving around the belief—held by no one at all except for those Uruk-Hai who boasted protruding tusks—that sizeable tusks signified impressive endowments in a lower region.

"If it'd been you, Captain No-Tusk," Jaddain went on, "there'd have been nothing to stop the blow except for your iron jaw." Jaddain shook his head and once again prodded at the tusk with his tongue. He asked in apparent gloom, "Do you think it's ruined my good looks?"

Mauhúr snorted. "Ruined them, my arse. The Urukeen will love it. They'll say it looks dashing. Maybe you should make a feature of it: have it gold-plated, or put a ring through it. Give the girls something to play with."

"Who needs a ring?" Jad asked scornfully. "I've got better things for them to play with."

"Well, as long as those don't get cut off you, you'll be fine." Mauhúr dismissed the conversation and his friend with, "Get some breakfast; you don't want to face death again on an empty stomach. And," he continued, "I've got your next mission for you. Find out how many bows we've still got, and what's our remaining supply of arrows."

Jaddain executed a jauntily casual salute and set off, while Mauhúr stood grimly praying that their stock of arrows was not too depleted for usefulness. He thought, _We damn well ought to requisition better armaments—or make 'em for ourselves if the Wizard won't supply them to us. None of us should go up against these horse-bastards again without a full complement of bows, arrows and spears._

Mauhúr had been expecting a message from his father. It came while he was pacing around the oak tree, eating a piece of rye bread and flexing his sore shoulder. Uglúk's voice sounded in his mind, _How did you do, Son? How many did you lose?_

 _Not too badly, sir,_ he answered. _We lost seven._

Uglúk agreed, _Not bad_. _You're doing better than we are._

Mauhúr hesitated. Then he could not stop himself from asking, _What happened, Father? What was going on up there?_

 _I'm sorry,_ his father's thought answered bitterly. _It's my fault._

As far as Mauhúr knew, it was the first time Uglúk had used those phrases.

Mauhúr could not take time to marvel. The angry thoughts were going on.

 _I let the filthy Halflings escape me. That pig-spawn Grishnákh's behind it, sure as shit. But I should never have let them out of my sight._

While Mauhúr asked himself helplessly what the hell Uglúk was talking about, the message continued. Heavy with anger and weariness, Uglúk's thoughts came to him, _Listen, Son: keep your eyes open out there for two measly runts like half-grown Dwarves, with fur growing on their feet. If you find 'em, grab 'em and don't let go. But don't hurt them. The Wizard wants them delivered to him safe and sound._

Bewildered, Mauhúr thought back, _Yes, sir. But—you don't want us to go searching for them now, do you? If we're to strike again to help you, we don't have time to waste. It's almost dawn._

 _I know,_ sighed his father's thoughts. _I know. Not much chance of finding them. Sharkû's* going to have to catch himself his own damned Halflings, now._

Uglúk seemed to pull himself together, impatiently dismissing his failure. He asked, _Are your boys in position?_

 _Not yet, sir,_ Mauhúr answered.

 _Well, get 'em in position. It's nearly time. And this time,_ Uglúk added, _we'll be ready. I promise you that._

 _Yes, sir._ Mauhúr hesitated again, and then impulsively put in, _And good luck to you._

He wondered if his father would berate him for that and deliver one of his standard lectures on how luck was meaningless compared with skill and intelligent strategy. But Uglúk only told him, _Good luck to you, Son._

For a moment Mauhúr watched his troops, sat along the river's shore looking as calm and relaxed as if they were out for a picnic. Then he said in quiet-voiced command, "All right, lads, gather 'round. It's orders time."

Jaddain loped up to him while the others were drawing together. "How are we looking?" Mauhúr asked.

"It could be worse. We've got 16 bows. If we divide our arrows equally, we've got enough for about ten arrows per archer."

 _Ten,_ he thought. _Yeah, it_ could _be worse. But it sure as shit isn't good._

"Right," he said firmly, refusing to let disappointment sound in his voice. "Jad, go get Khadan and Boran; I sent them downriver a little to keep watch. Now," he went on, "you pups better listen up. We've got one last chance to help our fellows get out of this. There's just one goal for us: to get as many Uruk-Hai out of this mess alive as we can. No heroics today. Nobody better try to distinguish himself. If I see anyone disobey me on this, I'll distinguish him by lopping off his head."

The boys nodded solemnly, though they had to know he was almost certainly bluffing. He wasn't likely to kill one of their own. But the embarrassment of the other punishments he could mete out might make any Uruki warrior _wish_ that he'd killed them.

"Here's the plan. We'll split into pairs. We've got enough bows to pair each archer with one other fighter. Except for me," he decided; "I'll take two archers with me."

At the edge of his vision he saw Jaddain, Khadan and Boran rejoining the rest of them. He went on laying out the battle plan.

"We'll sneak in closer before the horse-boys attack, if it looks like we can pull that off without being spotted. We won't go in for hand-to-hand, not unless the Riders come to us. The archers' job is to shoot down as many horsemen as you can until you run out of arrows. Do your damnedest to make each arrow count. Your partner's there to give you cover while you're firing. All you boys better hear this: we're not going to strike first. Leave it to the straw-heads to make the first move. Our goal is to distract them—and to kill as many as we can—right when they start their attack, to give our fellows up there on the hill a better chance of breaking through their line. You hear me on this, too: when you're out of arrows, or if your partner's killed, you can join forces with another pair if they're near you. Otherwise, _get the bloody Valar-damned hell back into the trees._ I want at least some of us getting home alive. It'll defeat the damned point of trying to rescue our elders, if we get all of their sons wiped out while we're at it."

He cast his gaze around at the lot of them. Somewhere far away in the pit of his stomach lurked nauseating dread. It surged forth at him for an instant as he wondered who, out of all of these kids, would still be living in one hour's time.

"You understand the orders?" Mauhúr demanded. With trusting and fearless faces, the boys nodded.

Mauhúr Son of Uglúk smiled at his lads. Again, as at the start of every battle, he locked his dread away deep inside him where it would do none of them any harm.

"Right," Mauhúr said. "Then let's do this."

It took little time to accomplish the tasks of grouping themselves into pairs and re-distributing their arrows. Mauhúr ordered two of their archers, "Khadan, Uli: you two are with me." They would make a good pair for him to work with. Khadan was experienced and reliable. He would help provide a steadying influence for Uli, the youngest member of their troop.

Once again the Uruki of the Five Villages made their way from under the eaves of Fangorn Forest. Again they crept through the grasses toward the dark bulk of the hill, and toward the Riders of Rohan.

Ahead, halfway up the slope of the knoll, the horsemen waited in silence. They no longer circled their prey. The Riders sat like grim statues atop their monstrous steeds, spears in their hands, motionless save for the occasional shifting or stamping of a horse.

Beyond the horsemen and their intended victims, the eastern sky gleamed red with the promise and menace of dawn. In black silhouette at the top of the knoll, Mauhúr could see shapes that might have been the ruins of some ancient fortress-tower, mighty blocks of weather-worn building stone honouring the remnants of former glory. But Mauhúr knew there were no remains of a hillfort on this knoll at the edge of the forest. Those dark shapes atop the hill were Uglúk and his fellow Fighting Uruk-Hai, standing shoulder to shoulder as they awaited the onslaught of their enemy.

Crawling toward the knoll through the grey sea of grass, Mauhúr could not help feeling that he and his lads were desperately exposed. He felt their advance could scarcely have been more noticeable if they'd been carrying torches and blowing their conch shells to signal their approach. But the horse-boys sat oblivious, backs resolutely turned to the eaves of the forest.

In his thoughts, Mauhúr snarled, _Thought you scared us off, didn't you, boys? You thought we hot-footed it out of here with our tails between our legs. Well, you've got some surprises ahead of you._ _You golden-haired horse-lovers haven't yet won the day._

Like a vast eye of fire, the sun's arc arose above the margin of the world. Sudden gleams of light sparked on the Riders' spearpoints, helms and shirts of mail. Light shone on the swords of the Uruk-Hai, drawn and ready, waiting for the attack.

One of the Riders raised his hunting horn and blew a long, clear call. All around the deadly circle, horn after horn replied. The horns of the Rohirrim tore through the morning air.

In their mocking notes, Mauhúr imagined he heard words in that call. The enemy's horns sang with the promise of destruction, and he imagined their words: _We are coming for you. Despair and die._

* * *

 _Author's Notes: Translations and a Discussion of Uruk-Hai Telepathy_

 _Urukeen_ : Young, unmarried female Uruk. Equivalent of "girl" or "maiden."

 _Uruki_ : Young, unmarried male Uruk.

The adult males of the Five Villages each serve in one of three military companies. The main company of foot soldiers, commanded by Uglúk, is made up of the older/married Uruk-Hai, and consists of around 80 to 100 warriors. The Uruki company, commanded by Mauhúr, has around 40 members (from early teen years until they are promoted to the main company due to distinguishing themselves in battle). A third company, also consisting of around 40 warriors, is a cavalry troop of Warg Riders.

 _Rak_ : A strong liquor with some medicinal properties. This is the "Orc-draught" drunk by Pippin and Merry in the chapter "The Uruk-Hai" of _The Two Towers_ , of which the two Hobbits do not think highly.

 _Sharkû_ : A nickname that the Uruk-Hai of Isengard use for Saruman. Tolkien tells us in a footnote to the chapter "The Scouring of the Shire" (Chapter Eight of _The Return of the King_ ) that the word _sharkû,_ meaning "old man," is "Orkish in origin."

 _On the Use of Telepathy Among the Uruk-Hai:_

In "The Uruk-Hai," Chapter Three of _The Two Towers_ , Uglúk encourages his worried fellow warriors with the statement, "Mauhúr and his lads are in the forest, and they should turn up any time now." Studying that chapter, I was puzzled by the question of how Uglúk had acquired this piece of information. It didn't seem logical to me that Mauhúr and his lads (whoever all of them might be, since Tolkien never follows up with details of who they actually are) would perpetually be stationed in the forest. Yet it also didn't seem plausible that Uglúk and Mauhúr would have made arrangements ahead of time to rendezvous in Fangorn Forest, since Uglúk presumably couldn't know when he and his warriors might be likely to return from their mission, or what route they might take when they did return.

To me, the most plausible explanation seemed to be that Uglúk and Mauhúr had been in contact via telepathy. This led me to look into the question of what Tolkien says about telepathy in Middle Earth. There are a number of incidents in _The Lord of the Rings_ which can be interpreted as telepathy in one sense or another. The one sequence I'm aware of which features extended conversation via telepathy is the scene of Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf conversing without the use of speech in the chapter "Many Partings."

In his circa 1960 essay "Ósanwe Kenta," Tolkien discusses the use of ósanwe ("interchange of thoughts") and sanwe latya ("thought opening") among the incarnate beings of Middle Earth. He writes that affinity (due to kinship, love or friendship), urgency ("imparted by great need of the 'sender' … joy, grief, or fear") and authority (the relationship between a leader and his/her follower) can all contribute to greater ease of communication via the interchange of thoughts. Naturally, considering his generally dismissive attitude toward the Orcish peoples, Tolkien shows us no specific examples of telepathic communication between Orcs. But we know from the sequence of Galadriel, Elrond and Gandalf's conversation that it is a skill practiced by at least some Elves. Orcs are often said to be "ruined Elves." My interpretation, which I will develop in these chronicles, is that they are a mixed-race people, descended from Elves and from most or all of the other peoples of Middle Earth. With Orcs having Elvish ancestry, I see no reason why Tolkien's ósanwe should not be practiced by Orcs just as much as by any other incarnate beings of Middle Earth.

My Uglúk and Mauhúr, as father and son, have affinity, their situation has plenty of urgency, and they also have a leader and follower relationship: in other words, they have the three factors that Tolkien cites as increasing the ease of "thought opening" communication between individuals. It seemed to me a fairly easy leap to postulate that they, along with many other Orcs who have the same sorts of ties binding them, are capable of telepathic communication.


	2. Chapter 2: The Defeated

_**Chronicles of the Uruk-Hai**_

 _Author's Note_

As in the first chapter, I feel I should mention that in these chronicles, I am using Uruk (singular) and Uruk-Hai (plural, "Orc-Folk") as terms that include all of the various peoples whom Tolkien describes as "Orcs." Also as in Chapter One, terms marked with an asterisk are defined in a second author's note at the end of the chapter.

 _ **Chapter Two**_

 _ **The Defeated**_

… _the Orcs were greater in number than we counted on. Others joined them, coming out of the East across the Great River … And others, too, came out of the forest. Great Orcs, who also bore the White Hand of Isengard: that kind is stronger and more fell than all others._

—Éomer, "The Riders of Rohan," Chapter Two of _The Two Towers_ by J.R.R. Tolkien

* * *

The calls of the horse-riders' horns rang forth, greeting the dawn with their promises of death.

All about their circle, the demon horses neighed in answer to their masters' horns. Then another noise rose up: the voices of many Men.

The horse-boys of Rohan were singing.

As though the start of their song had been the true signal they'd awaited, the Riders charged. Like a mighty wave they surged up the hill toward the troop of Uruk-Hai waiting at its peak.

Mauhúr hissed, "Now."

From out of the grasses to either side of him, Khadan and Uli both fired at the horsemen's rapidly departing backs. Mauhúr thought one of their shots told; probably Uli's, judging by the position in their line of the Rider who suddenly reared upward from his saddle and then plummeted off his horse.

What he saw at the edges of his vision told Mauhúr that others of their lads' shots had succeeded. Over to the left he saw another Rider fall. He thought he saw another of them slump forward against his horse's neck.

"Come on," Mauhúr ordered Khadan and Uli. "We'll move in closer."

Keeping low to get as much cover from the grasses as they could, the three of them raced toward the knoll. From the hilltop came shouts, neighing, the clang of weapons and the whirr of many arrows fired as one.

The horsemen's singing continued. Its sound was like a windstorm or an advancing forest fire: constant, insistent, mocking, merciless.

Riders came charging down the hill toward them. Mauhúr realised the Men must have attacked the knoll from all directions at once. The horsemen now approaching were those who had charged from the east. Their momentum had carried them over the crest of the knoll and on down the other side.

The ragged line of them pulled their mounts to a halt along the slope, turning to head up the hill once more. As the Riders started away from them again, Mauhúr's companions fired. Another Rider fell.

Isolated figures on foot scattered from the top of the knoll, hurling themselves into panicked flight down the hillside. By ones and twos the horsemen pursued the fleeing figures and mowed them down. Mauhúr heard no more arrow volleys; just the sound, from down here in the flatland, of individual shots. He knew the troop up on the hill must have fired the last of their arrows.

He couldn't believe any warriors from their villages would be foolish enough to try fleeing alone. There must be other Uruk-Hai up there besides his father's troop; that much had already been clear from Uglúk's mention of "that pigspawn Grishnákh."

As he had expected, their own fighters on the knoll were sticking together. For a moment his over-heated imagination envisioned the dark mass of warriors as the head of some great dragon, awakened from a snooze atop the knoll and now starting its ponderous way down the hill.

The dragon's head that was the troop of Fighting Uruk-Hai drove resolutely forward, down the slope toward the trees and safety. The Riders surrounding them at first seemed to have no better fortune than if they were truly fighting a dragon. Uruk-Hai swords flashed like the dragon's teeth. More Riders fell.

"Come on," Mauhúr commanded his companions again. "While they're harrying our fellows, we'll harry them. Keep as low as you can. The longer we can stop the horse-boys from spotting us, the better."

Again they ran scramblingly through the grasses. Before them, hoofbeats and the Riders' hate-filled song pounded like thunder. And suddenly Mauhúr realised that the pounding sounds were not only ahead of them.

He pivoted and saw two horsemen charging straight for them. In the same instant, his mind registered that the first of the Riders was a bowman. The archer had his bow levelled at them and was just about to fire.

Mauhúr lunged toward Uli, bringing his shield up to cover their youngest archer. The Rider's arrow thudded into his shield. Uli fired as horse and Rider thundered past them. Mauhúr saw the arrow stick in the horse's neck. It seemed to trouble the beast no more than would the sting of a fly.

The second horseman was charging at Khadan, speared poised at the ready. He did not get the chance to let his spear fly. Khadan fired just as the Man brought back his arm for the throw. Khadan's arrow blossomed in the Rider's chest and he toppled backward. Some distant portion of Mauhúr's mind noticed that until the instant when the arrow struck, the Man had still been singing.

The first Rider had turned his horse and was coming at them again, readying his bow to fire. Uli fired at the Man and missed. The horseman took his shot just as Mauhúr dove to get his shield in front of Uli again. The arrow ploughed through the grass beside them.

Khadan fired. The Rider ducked low to his horse's neck and the arrow sailed over him. Horse and Rider still were coming for them, the wounded animal snorting and foaming in its eagerness to crush them beneath its hooves.

Uli flung himself to the right to get out of the monster's way. Mauhúr crouched low, risking the pummelling hoof-blows. He threw himself under the animal itself and drove upward with his sword. As he lunged forward, the horse's momentum carried it in the opposite direction. His sword opened up the monster's belly down nearly all the length of its body. He heard the animal's unearthly scream as the long wound drenched Mauhúr in liquid, heat and stench.

Mauhúr barely got himself out from under the beast before it fell. Its Rider was trapped by the body of his horse. He lay motionless while the animal on top of him flailed and screamed.

Mauhúr knew he should take the time to cut the Rider's throat, in case the bastard had simply been knocked unconscious by the fall. Before he could do so, another nearby scream yanked his attention from the Man.

Over to their right, Mauhúr saw one of their warriors sprawled face-down on the ground. His partner, bow in hand, was facing off against three of the horsemen. The archer lunged to grab up his slain comrade's shield. Already running to join the fight, Mauhúr slammed his sword into its scabbard and reached for the spear that he had seized in the earlier skirmish, shoved under the baldric on his back. He flung the spear as he ran. To his joy it impaled the horseman who had just raised his sword to swing it down upon their archer.

The Man dropped his sword and clutched at the spear in his chest, with both his hands. Of seemingly its own volition, the Rider's horse turned and charged at Mauhúr. He heard arrows singing past him, and shouts that he thought came from both Uli and Khadan.

An explosion of weight and pain burst on him from his left side. Another horse must have hit him, he realised, while he was facing off against its fellow. Thrown to the ground, he fought to drag his sword from its scabbard again. He saw a nightmare vision of a rearing horse, all surging legs and hooves, before something slammed into his head. Distantly he heard his own grunt from the impact as his vision blacked into nothingness.

Around him he heard more shouts from Uruk-Hai and horsemen. He heard maddened neighing and the whirr of arrows. Close beside him, someone yelled, "Get him out of here! Get him back to the trees!"

"No," Mauhúr tried to protest. "No." But his hearing was going the way of his sight. And then sight and sound and every other sense were gone.

* * *

The first thing he noticed as he awoke again was that the horse-boys were singing no longer.

He heard no singing, but nearby he heard sobs.

He opened his eyes, sitting up as he did so.

"Steady, steady," a rough voice near him cautioned. "You don't need to leap into combat in the first instant you're awake."

Mauhúr blinked and saw that crouching beside him was Lugdush, second-in-command of his father's company. The grizzled old Uruk had been missing his left eye for decades, but now he was also missing the tip of his left ear. Blood from the ear had dripped down his neck and caked there. Irrelevantly Mauhúr noticed that the old warrior's blood was more red than black, far lighter in colour than that of most Uruk-Hai whose blood he could remember seeing.

He looked about him. They were back at their refuge in the forest, underneath the big oak tree. The sobbing Uruk, he saw, was young Uli. The youthful archer sat on one of the great, gnarled roots of the tree and wept without care for who might see or hear him. Mauhúr saw many of his own warriors scattered about, some sitting and some standing along the riverbank. At first glance he saw none of his father's troop except for Lugdush.

He did not see his father. With sudden force, the knowledge hit him that his father was gone from him in more ways than just his sight.

He had never thought of Uglúk as being any kind of a constant presence in his mind. He had not thought his father was always there; he'd believed he only felt Uglúk's presence when the two of them were speaking in their thoughts. But now he suddenly knew that some sense of his father _had_ always been with him. He realised it only now that the comfort of his father's presence was gone.

Mauhúr heard himself saying, "My father is dead."

"I'm sorry, Mauhúr," Lugdush told him, voice hoarse and almost choking. "I am so sorry."

Mauhúr got to his feet. His head ached and his vision swam slightly, but he did not think he was seriously the worse for wear. Lugdush stood up beside him, clearly ready to grab the younger warrior if Mauhúr started to keel over.

He was about to ask Lugdush how many they had lost. Then he grimly told himself it made more sense to approach the question from the other way around. He asked, "How many of us are left?"

Lugdush grimaced, sighed, and started picking the dried blood off his neck. "Your boys did pretty well. A lot better than we did. There's twenty-one of your company still alive, including you. As for us …" The old Uruk sighed again and shook his head. "We've got eight left."

"Eight," Mauhúr echoed, appalled. "How many were you to begin with?"

"We were eighty."

The enormity of it hit Mauhúr like a spear through the gut.

On their way to the knoll, he had told his lads that if they failed in this battle, every household of the Five Villages would be in mourning. That doom had now come to pass, and worse besides. He didn't even know if there were enough of them left to make up five villages any more. Certainly there weren't enough warriors still alive to field a decent-sized regiment. Only their Warg Riding company was anywhere near intact; always supposing that the Warg Riders had not met disaster in some other battle.

He asked himself what would become of them. He guessed they would have no choice but to be foisted onto some other regiment. He knew it had to happen, but the knowledge made nausea twist through him. It seemed an insult to his father's memory. Knowing that this fate must be ahead of them, he felt like someone had shat on their warriors' graves.

Suddenly Mauhúr realised there was one specific Uruki warrior he had not yet seen. Feeling another surge of nauseous fear, he asked Lugdush, "Was Jaddain killed?"

"No. Jaddain is fine," Lugdush reassured him. The old warrior smiled at having good news to impart, for a change. "I sent him and a couple of our lads to the edge of the woods, to keep an eye on the Whiteskins."

Mauhúr nodded and let out a gusting breath of relief. He and Lugdush reached out then to grasp each other's arms, placing their foreheads together in their people's ritual embrace. In that contact Mauhúr felt how badly the older Uruk was trembling.

Lugdush hid it well, as one would expect from a warrior of his experience. But from their embrace, Mauhúr knew that Uglúk's second-in-command was labouring under grief and guilt perhaps even stronger than Mauhúr's own.

He asked Lugdush as they stepped apart again, "Who out of your troop survived?"

Frowning, the grizzled veteran counted their survivors on his fingers. "In addition to me, there's Malchdyn, Jer, Othorod, Uglúk Son of Üneg, Askar, Ükher and Ögiz." He looked at Mauhúr again with a grimacing expression that was probably meant to be a smile, and said, "The eight of us would all be dead if it wasn't for your father. He saved us all."

"I want to hear of it," Mauhúr answered gruffly. He swallowed back a surge of emotion that felt worrisomely close to tears. "I'll talk with the lads, and then I want to see what the horse-bastards are up to. Then you can tell me of him."

Lugdush's grimace turned angry. "There's not much doubt of what the bastards are up to. They'll be stripping our dead and burning them. It's what they always do, when they win a battle. We already heard them at the edge of the forest, chopping down some trees for their bonfire. When they've got our dead burning, then they'll bury their own dead. I'll be willing to bet the straw-heads are going to camp on the battlefield overnight, with the amount of time it'll take them to complete the bonfire and their burying. So we'll just have to wait them out, in here. Wait till tomorrow, when they finally piss off and we can get out there to see what they've left behind for us to salvage."

Mauhúr gave a grim nod. He suddenly felt as though he were as young and inexperienced as poor Uli.

Naturally he had heard tell of the Riders' standard practice after their victories in battle. But he had never actually witnessed it himself. In surprise he realised that of all the combats in which he had taken part, this was the first in which their forces were unquestionably defeated.

As was his duty as their commander, Mauhúr made his way among his warriors, speaking with them and sharing the ritual embrace with each of them in turn. Uli was the only one he did not embrace. The youngest Uruki was still sobbing so hard that Mauhúr judged he was far from ready for any meaningful contact. All he did was briefly grip Uli's shoulder, wondering how long it would be before the youth could conquer his grief.

He told himself there was no shame and no surprise in the youngster reacting so. It was Uli's first defeat, just as it was Mauhúr's. But more than that, Uli had lost three close relatives in the destruction of Uglúk's troop.

Uli's father had been slain years ago, Mauhúr remembered; probably before Uli was even old enough to walk. But Uli's three uncles, his father's brothers, had taken on the duty of being father-figures for the lad. Now all three of his uncles were slain.

Farther up the river than any of the others, sitting atop a boulder that jutted into the water, was Askar, one of the eight survivors of Uglúk's company. The older warrior hunched forward, staring dazedly into nothing. His hands were clutched together in front of him. Mauhúr saw blood dripping darkly from Askar's hands, as his claws bit into his own skin.

Mauhúr had no need to wonder what had led Askar to this state of mind. His sons, Bürkit and Bult, were the brothers who fell in the Uruki troop's first skirmish with the Riders at the foot of the knoll.

Mauhúr called out, "Askar." He hoped he could at least distract the grieving warrior enough to halt his flaying of his own hands.

The older Uruk looked up and saw him. Abruptly Askar surged down off the boulder toward him. One of the largest Uruk-Hai of the Five Villages, he loomed a whole head in height above Mauhúr. As he clutched the young commander's armoured shoulders, he very nearly lifted Mauhúr off the ground.

Mauhúr thought he would have to fight to defend himself against this father whose sons had died under his command. But after a moment's wild staring, Askar simply grated out, "I grieve for your loss, Mauhúr Son of Uglúk."

Relieved to hear that his voice did not emerge as an intimidated squeak, Mauhúr answered him, "I grieve for yours, Askar Son of Azof."

Askar's next action also took Mauhúr by surprise. Instead of performing the ritual embrace, Askar pulled Mauhúr to him in a fierce, armour-clashing hug.

Mauhúr had never hugged anyone in this way except for his immediate family and Jaddain. But he knew better than to try and pull away. His own grief surged painfully as he thought, _Askar is hugging me like this because he can never again hug his own sons. And because my father will never again hug me._

Hastily recovering himself, Askar released Mauhúr and drew away from him. "You go on," Askar said gruffly. "I know you have work to do."

Mauhúr decided to risk the ritual embrace. Askar did not resist him as he gripped the older Uruk's arms. After a moment Askar lowered his head to place their foreheads together, and clutched Mauhúr's arms in turn.

When they had stepped apart again, Mauhúr asked, "Will you come back to the others now?"

"Not yet," Askar muttered, his gaze slipping away from Mauhúr's. "I will. Soon."

Mauhúr made his way back to Lugdush and their other survivors. He and Lugdush briefly consulted together. Then he addressed their troops.

"Lugdush and I are going to check in with our sentries and see what the Whiteskins are up to. The rest of you: until we give orders to the contrary, you stay here. No one goes to the edge of the woods unless he's placed on sentry duty. We still have the duty to get some of us home alive. The last thing we need is for someone to go berserk and run out there trying to slaughter the fuckers single-handedly. You got me? You stay here, and you hold it together."

The lads answered him with growls and grumbles of assent.

He and Lugdush crept to the eaves of the forest. They paused amidst the last straggling trees and Lugdush gave the croaking raven's call that their regiment used as a signal.

A second "raven," with more of a gurgle in its call, answered from a tangle of bramble-filled brush to their right.

Lugdush and Mauhúr scrambled over and made their way into the brush. The rambling knot of undergrowth made an ideal hiding and spying location—so ideal, Mauhúr had serious doubts on the straw-heads' intelligence level for not periodically riding over and jabbing their spears into this bush on general principles.

The newer, living branches were near the top of the tangle, where they could reach the sunlight. Down below, older branches died as they grew more and more deeply buried. As dead branches broke off beneath the weight of their fellows above, they created a perfect cave in which to shelter a party of Uruk-Hai spies. That was, of course, always assuming that the spies did not give themselves away by too loudly crawling on the fallen branches.

Sharing this prickly refuge with them were Jaddain and Othorod, a survivor from Uglúk's troop. Jaddain and Mauhúr exchanged a heart-felt grin at seeing each other alive.

Jaddain whispered, "I knew your skull was too thick to let some lousy horse kick a hole in it."

Mauhúr returned, "I knew you wouldn't let the bastards lay a finger on you, after that little incident with your tusk. One beauty-marring injury per battle is enough."

"Damn straight," replied Jaddain.

Lugdush asked, "Where's Malchdyn?"

"Down nearer the river," Othorod answered. "Near where the Riders are digging their burial mound."

Lugdush nodded and continued, "You haven't had any trouble?"

"Not a bit of it," said Jaddain, "though Melkor knows why not. The horse-fuckers' tree-cutting detail nearly got close enough to trip on us. If their sense of smell was as keen as their horses' they'd have nosed us for sure."

Othorod added, "Good thing they didn't try cutting any of this brush for kindling. Not sure why they didn't. Guess there's too many blackberry thorns in here for their sensitive little hands."

Mauhúr wormed forward to get a good view of their enemy's activities. To the fore and to either side of their hiding place were the fresh stumps of a dozen medium-sized trees. The ground sloped up a bit to meet the forest, with an expanse of lower flatland between the woods and the knoll. Down there on the flat the Riders of Rohan laboured at constructing their bonfire.

At the base of all, Mauhúr caught glimpses of a platform built of logs. Above that were stacked the corpses. Mauhúr's jaw tightened as he stared at that pile of bodies.

They were too far away for him to recognize who was who. He was sure they were the bodies of far more than eighty Uruk-Hai. At a guess he would place the number at closer to two hundred.

Once again he wondered what the stories behind this disaster could be. Who were those other Uruk-Hai who'd been here with Uglúk's troop? What had brought them here? What was the explanation for those cryptic thoughts Mauhúr had heard from his father—thoughts about Grishnákh, whoever he might be, and those "measly runts like half-grown Dwarves," the mysterious Halflings?

At his side, Jaddain whispered, "I'm pretty sure I saw where they placed your father's body. Down there," he continued, pointing through the tangle of brush, "at that corner of the pile, near the edge."

Mauhúr nodded. Suddenly he thought that he could not stare at the heaped-up corpses any longer. He looked toward Jaddain through the lattice-work of branches and saw the naked sorrow on his friend's face.

Jaddain reached out to him and gripped Mauhúr's hand. He told his commander and friend, "I am so damned sorry."

Again Mauhúr nodded, not trusting what his voice might sound like if he made the attempt to speak. He realized his hand was clenched into a fist, and he forced himself to unclench it so he could grasp Jaddain's hand in return.

The thought came to him that with Uglúk's death, Jaddain had lost the closest he had to a father. Uglúk had raised Jaddain in his own household since Mauhúr and Jaddain were five years old; ever since the Tark* raid that stole the lives of Jaddain's family.

He wondered if Jaddain was thinking about that now, just as he was. He wondered if his friend was recalling that hellish night during their journey from the East to enlist in the White Wizard's service at Isengard: the night when a Tark raiding party found their encampment while most of them slept. The raiders had slain the sentry and descended on the camp, raining their arrows into the sleeping Uruk-Hai—warriors, wives and children alike.

Jaddain's father and mother were among the first to die. Jaddain would assuredly have died with them, but that night he was sleeping over in the tent of his best friend's family—the family that would become Jaddain's surrogate family, from that night onward. Mauhúr vividly recalled waking to see his parents seizing weapons and charging out of the tent, while they roared at Mauhúr, Jaddain, and Mauhúr's elder sister to hide under the bedrolls and not come out.

It was Jaddain's twin sister Yulduz who had managed to raise the alarm. She got out several screams to waken the rest of the camp before a Tark arrow pinned her to the ground. Even then she hadn't been dead. She had lived long enough to talk a while with her brother after the fighting was over, when a dozen raiders were slain and the others had fled.

The voice of Lugdush pulled Mauhúr out of his terror-filled memories. Lugdush muttered, "Whose head is that?"

Mauhúr scowled out from their prickly nest to see what Lugdush was talking about. With a jolt of anger and shame, he realised it had been there all along and he hadn't even noticed it. Beside the construct of logs and corpses were piled the armour and weapons that the horsemen had stripped from the Uruk dead. Rising up from the centre of that pile stood a spear, or perhaps it was a sapling cut by the straw-heads' tree-felling detail and stripped of its limbs. And mounted atop that pole sat what could only be a severed head.

It was a foregone conclusion that the head had belonged to some Uruk. More than that, Mauhúr knew the head belonged to one of their own. The head still bore its helmet, and on the side of that helm was blazoned the sign of the White Hand.

"I don't know," Othorod answered bitterly. "I've been trying to figure that out ever since they stuck it up there. I keep thinking if I stare at it long enough I'll be able to recognize him. But I can't."

Mauhúr's thoughts suddenly flashed to the warrior of Rohan on whose flesh the Uruki had feasted, on an evening that already seemed so insanely far in the past. He thought of how they had left the Man's head planted on his spear, golden hair flying in the wind.

The foolish thought came to him that maybe that warrior had cursed them. Perhaps his spirit had journeyed with them, from the battlefield where he died, all the way to this battlefield where so many of their own had fallen. Perhaps that slain warrior's hatred had brought this doom upon them.

 _Something brought this doom on us,_ he told himself, _but that "something" was not the wrath of one Man's ghost. That something was … war. It was the war that's gone on all our lives. The war that's been going on forever—or as near to forever as makes no damned difference at all._

He forced himself to look again on the heap of Uruk-Hai bodies. The Whiteskins had just about finished their construction work. When he and Lugdush had first joined their fellows in this vantage point, the Men had still been adding the occasional corpse to the pile. Now it seemed that task was done. They had moved on to stacking a second layer of logs atop their enemies' corpses.

Mauhúr was glad he had given his lads the order not to budge from their refuge at the big oak. He wasn't sure that all of the Uruki survivors could restrain themselves from running out there, if they saw what he was seeing. He hoped they would, but he was not willing to wager their lives on that hope.

Even he was not quite immune from the urge to come up with some hare-brained scheme of attack. He wanted to invent some means of taking the horse-lovers so badly by surprise that they could rout the Men and rescue their comrades' bodies. But he recognized that dream for the lunacy that it was.

Twice before they had failed to defeat this band of Riders. How could he hope that they might have a chance now, in broad daylight with barely a tenth of their former numbers, and with scarcely an arrow left among the lot of them?

He knew he could do nothing except to watch. So watch he did.

He watched as the Riders of Rohan completed their construct of logs and corpses. And he watched as they set that pyre alight.

Mauhúr kept his gaze fixed on the corner of the pile where Jaddain had said he thought he'd seen Uglúk's body. At this distance, and with the slain warriors' armour stripped off them, there was no way of recognizing any of the dead with certainty. But just at the spot that Jaddain had pointed out, there lay a body with the deep black skin colouring that Uglúk and Mauhúr shared. None other in that immediate vicinity had the same coloration. The Uruk whose body lay below and to one side of the black-skinned one had a grey complexion, while above and to the other side lay one whose skin was a reddish-brown.

Mauhúr watched. He watched as the leaping flames made their way to that corner of the pile. He watched as slowly the bodies grew obscured behind a veil of flames and smoke.

The roar and crackle of the fire rose until he thought that sound would forever be echoed in his mind. It reminded him inexorably of the sound of the horse-riders' singing, of their mocking song that droned on without end as warrior after warrior died.

As the smoke rose on the wind and drifted over the forest, its smell seemed no different from that of any other cookfire, except in volume. But to Mauhúr it suddenly seemed the worst thing he had ever smelled.

He wished he could weep. But he could not let himself do that, not even here where the only people who would see him were his dearest friend, and two friends of his father who had been there for Mauhúr's name-giving ceremony on the day after his birth.

At last the flames began to die down. Now and again, two or three horse-boys would walk over to the fire, prodding it with their spears to encourage thorough burning and reduce the remains more fully to ashes.

Mauhúr decided he had seen enough. He turned toward Lugdush and asked, his voice hoarse, "Will you tell me now about my father?"

Lugdush nodded. "Let's move a ways back from here. I don't want any horse-buggers stumbling over us while we're talking. If they wander over and hear Uruk speech from inside a bush, not even they could fail to notice that we're in here."

Mauhúr nodded as well, though he doubted that Lugdush truly feared any Men would wander over and hear them. He thought it more likely that Lugdush wanted to escape from the sight in front of them, just as he did.

Lugdush told Jaddain and Othorod, "We'll send others to take this duty from you soon." Then he and Mauhúr wormed their way back out of the brush and scrambled into the thicker tree-cover.

The knowledge hit Mauhúr that though he could not bear to keep watching the burning, neither was he ready to leave it fully behind.

He stopped beside a large chestnut tree near the edge of the woods. Its ancient trunk was so massive and gnarled that the tree seemed to his imagination like a gigantic old Troll, sitting there on guard against any advancing enemy. He thought the tree must have been pruned sometime in the misty past, its limbs lopped off just at the level of his head. The narrower, twisting limbs growing upward from that point changed the picture in his imagination. It wasn't a Troll, after all. Instead it was some loathsome water monster, its huge, lumpy body crowned with hundreds of questing tentacles.

Jerking his thumb at the tree, he told Lugdush, "Let's climb up there. We can still see the battlefield from there, but it's far enough back, none of the bastards should hear us talking."

Lugdush gazed up at the tree and gave a sour grin. He said, "And if any of them do go exploring and hear voices wafting from a tree, they'll probably think it's some spirit of the trees and go high-tailing it out of here. And that I would love to see."

Like the tangle of brush where Jaddain and Othorod were still hiding, the ancient sweet chestnut seemed almost purposefully designed as a hideout. Its twisting younger branches afforded ample concealment, while the older branches' remains gave the two Uruk-Hai reclining space as large and comfortable as any bench. Mauhúr and Lugdush settled into the tree, Mauhúr choosing a spot from which he could easily see the battlefield if he chose, or he could equally well ignore it.

Leaning his head back on the base of one of the younger branches, he ordered quietly, "Now, tell me. What happened?"

Lugdush's expression was bitter with grief as he began the tale.

"There were too many of them. Just … far too damned many. By the time they launched their attack, we'd already shot most of our arrows. We just had enough of them left for one last good volley." He gave an angry snort and went on, "Most of the mountain-maggots didn't have any arrows left at all. They shot them as they ran, while the horse-breeders were herding us here, no matter how many times your father ordered them not to. Stupid fucks probably didn't hit a single horseman that way, and they wasted arrows that could have saved us all later. _And_ they kept shooting at the bastards' watch-fires, too, from up on the hill, and they probably still never hit anyone. They stopped all that foolery after Uglúk knocked one idiot's block off because of it, but it was too late, by that time; the little swine barely had any arrows left." Lugdush sighed, shook his head, and added, "As for us, we'd already shot off a mûmak-load of arrows back by the Great River."

Mauhúr figured he would hear that part of the story later. He waited for Lugdush to continue.

"It looked like things were working out, for a while, when we charged for the trees. For a while I really thought we'd make it. We almost did. But there were too damned many of them. No end of them, it seemed like, and they kept their distance; stayed out of reach of our swords and spears, and their archers used us for target practice. We kept our shield wall good and tight, but more and more of us were getting shot in the head, and each time another one fell it got harder to close up the wall, and they kept on shooting, and …"

The older Uruk squeezed shut his one remaining eye. He turned his face upward as though in prayer, and he muttered, "We fucked up. We couldn't do it. We weren't good enough. They mowed us down."

"Is that how Uglúk died?" Mauhúr asked. His voice sounded weirdly distant to his ears. "The Riders shot him down?"

Lugdush suddenly opened his eye again and gave a fang-baring grin. "No. Not him. They couldn't pick him off that easily. Uglúk died a hero, just like you'd expect him to do.

"Right at the eaves of trees …" the old warrior went on, "we almost made it, we were right there, but they trapped us again, some of their archers got in front of us, and their Valar-damned arrows were like rain … and you know what else?" he added, with hysteria sounding in his voice. "They were still singing. Some of them were still singing, anyway—and they even managed to keep together in it, to be at the same damn place in their song. Like we were so shit-unimportant to them, they didn't even care about killing us. All they cared about was hitting the same note at the same damned time."

He shook his head and gave a huge, shuddering sigh. "Finally there was just a heap of us lying there, most of us dead, the few others hiding under our shields, trying to figure out what the _fuck_ we could still do. That's when your father ordered us, 'All right, you maggots. Anyone who can still get out of this alive, _do it_. Mauhúr and the other lads are going to need your help. And you're needed back home, too. Get into the trees if you can, while I keep these pretty boys busy.'

"The horse-fucks didn't know what he'd said, of course, but he switched over to the Common Tongue, and he stood up and roared at them, 'Where's the chief of you golden-haired little cunts? Has he got the balls to climb down off his horse and face me sword to sword? Or will he just keep hiding at arrow-range like the rest of you?'"

Lugdush grinned again. He said, "They stopped singing, then. I'd thought nothing short of killing the lot of them would make them stop. But Uglúk knew how to make them shut up. That's another debt we owe to him—in addition to our lives."

With another shake of his head, Lugdush took up the tale. "I couldn't see much of what happened, lying there playing dead beneath my shield. But one of the Men laughed and called back to Uglúk, 'That would be me, Orc*. I am Éomer Son of Éomund, Third Marshal of Riddermark. And I will be glad to try my sword against yours, and to learn which of the two of us has the bigger balls, also.'

"Uglúk shouted back to him, 'Good! I am Uglúk Son of Üürekh, captain of the Fighting Uruk-Hai. And I'm glad to learn that one of you blushing beauties is more than just a horse-raping coward.'"

Lugdush closed his eye again and leaned his head against a limb of the tree. "So they fought," he whispered. "Uglúk gave a good accounting of himself, from the amount of time I heard their swords clashing. And the horse-boys …"

He sat up once more and glowered at Mauhúr. Lugdush snarled in disgust, "The horse-boys, to a Man, proved that they are maggot-brained fools. It makes me want to puke, knowing a company of Fighting Uruk-Hai got ourselves wiped out by a band of village idiots! Uglúk led the duel away from us, away from the trees, and the jackasses followed them to watch. They rode after Uglúk and that Éomer, so they wouldn't miss one single moment of the fight, and they left the pile of us behind, never dreaming mere _Orcs_ could have the brains to lie there playing dead.

"Well," he amended, "one of them had more sense, maybe, and he stayed there on guard, but his sense just got him killed. Malchdyn pulled an arrow from the body of the lad lying next to him and shot the sentry with it; skewered him in the throat, just as neat as you please. And the rest of the Riders were so busy watching as Uglúk and their chief hacked at each other, the sentry slid right off his horse and all the other horse-morons never even noticed."

Lugdush stared down at his hands. He wasn't clawing at his own skin, as Askar had been, but Mauhúr thought it wouldn't take much to make him start doing that. The old warrior grated, "And we crawled. All of us who were still alive crawled away into the trees. We crawled like worms, while Uglúk fought and saved our lives. And we left him to die."

 _And when my father was killed,_ Mauhúr thought, _I was lying unconscious, for the stupid, pathetic reason that I allowed a horse to kick me in the head._

His own grief, anger and guilt welled up in him. But he knew what he had to say, and he said it. "Uglúk gave you a direct order. He was right to give that order, and you were right to obey him."

For this moment, at least, his words seemed to make a difference. Lugdush gazed into his face. Then the older warrior told him, "Uglúk was proud of you, Mauhúr. I know that he is even more proud of you now."

Mauhúr stared upward into the branches of the tree above him. The thought struck him that something looked funny about the tree.

There seemed too many leaves still on the branches for this time of year, even considering the usual stubborn resilience of the sweet chestnut's leaves. He frowned up at those thin, brown leaves stretching out like the fingers of hundreds of hands.

The brown leaves were rattling. He hadn't noticed it before, but now it seemed as though every single one of those leaves was hitting itself against its neighbours. It sounded to him like the rattling of the bone sistrum his mother used in her prayers and ceremonies—if the sound of her sistrum had been magnified a thousandfold.

Mauhúr sighed. He felt suddenly overwhelmed with weary, desperate emptiness.

"How did it all happen?" he asked Lugdush. "Who were those other Uruk-Hai? How did they meet up with your company? Is there anything you can tell me about your mission?"

Lugdush sighed in return. "I suppose there's no reason to try and keep it secret from you. Guess it isn't a secret, now, anyway, since all those swine from Mordor knew about it already."

Slowly, Lugdush began, "Here's what your father told me. He said Sharkû sent us to the Great River to intercept a party heading south from the Elf-Woods. Sharkû said there would be Men and Elves among them; we were to kill any of those that we found. But there'd be others we weren't to kill. Halflings."

Mauhúr nodded. Just as Uglúk had done, Lugdush had said the word "Halflings" in the Common Tongue, instead of choosing an equivalent in their own language.

"Uglúk mentioned them to me," Mauhúr said. "What are these 'Halflings'?"

Shaking his head, Lugdush answered, "Weird little characters, from somewhere up north, supposedly. _Way_ up north; out beyond Gundabad, is what I've heard. Look more-or-less like they're Men-folk's children, I guess, only they've got hairy feet. Really hairy. They don't wear shoes, so they can show off the hair. Or maybe all that hair would get too prickly for them if they closed it up inside of shoes." With another head-shake, he declared, "Strangest thing I ever saw."

Mauhúr was of the opinion that during the old veteran's long life, he had probably seen some stranger things than hairy feet. But he didn't bother to comment on it. "Go on," he said instead.

"Our orders were to capture the Halflings and bring them to the White Hand, alive and unspoiled. They weren't even to be searched, Uglúk told us. Supposedly one of them is carrying on him…something that the Wizard wants. Guess he didn't want them searched in case one of us found the whatever-this-thing-is and decided to keep it.

"We found them easy enough, almost as soon as we reached the River. But things went to pot right after that. And they just kept on getting worse.

"We weren't the only ones tracking that party. Just as soon as we spotted the little hairy-foots, we ran into the competition: a war party of Cave Uruk-Hai from Moria. Turns out the Halflings and their friends took a jaunt through Moria and managed to kill some high panjandrum of the place along the way. The boys from Moria were chasing them to take revenge.

"Well, Uglúk wasn't having that, of course. He told them they could kill all the Men and Elves they liked, but we were taking the Halflings back alive.

"Even that didn't turn out as easy as it ought to have. The two Halflings had this big Tark warrior with them, and he gave us a hot few minutes of it. He killed four of our lads—Baildagch, Baavgai, Ayu and Tsamkhag—and I don't even know how many of the Moria-Folk he skewered. Ended up with a nice, big pile of them around him, anyway. I thought that bastard was never going to die. We shot him full of arrows 'till he looked like a porcupine, and he still kept on fighting. Well, he did fall down, finally, and we grabbed the Halflings and headed for home.

"And that should have been mission accomplished. Right?" Lugdush growled. "Only the whole damned mission turned into one bloody cock-up after another.

"That lot from Moria—the ones the Tark hadn't slaughtered—decided to come along with us. Maybe a few of them still wanted to gut the Halflings for revenge, but I think most decided they might as well come to Isengard and sign up for Sharkû's service." Scowling, he shook his head again. "Stupid bastards should've just gone home. They'd be alive now, if they had.

"The Moria-boys weren't our big problem, though. Our big problem came from Mordor. Like usual."

Mauhúr looked at him intently. "Was this problem named Grishnákh?"

"That's him," Lugdush said, and he spat. "Grishnákh. A long-armed shit who wants everyone to think he's thick-as-thieves with the big bosses back in Mordor. You know the type. Gives himself airs. Acts like the Nazgûl invite him over for tea and cakes, to discuss strategy with them when they're planning their campaigns."

Mauhúr couldn't help grinning at the thought of the Nazgûl's tea and cakes. But Lugdush was hurrying on.

"Seems the Mordor bosses sent him on the same mission Sharkû sent us on. To bring back the Halflings, alive and unspoiled. Only he was to bring them to Lugbúrz* and we were to bring them to Isengard.

"So then we had Moria-maggots whining about how they had to kill the hairy runts, Grishnákh talking big about his dear friends the Nazgûl, and Uglúk about ready to slaughter the whole stinking lot of them. Uglúk lopped off a couple of heads; Othorod, Saykas and I did for another three of the maggots, and Grishnákh made himself scarce. But Uglúk told me he thought the bugger would be back. He figured Grishnákh was going for reinforcements, so he'd have a better chance of seizing the Halflings. Turned out Uglúk was right."

Lugdush told Mauhúr, "That's when your father sent for you. He said if Grishnákh was fetching reinforcements, we'd better have some, too."

"I see," Mauhúr murmured.

"Well, things looked all right for a while after that, but then the next few mûmak turds started landing on us. First a horse-boy scout spotted us and got away to tell about it, so that's when we knew we were really in the cesspit. Then His High-and-Mightiness Grishnákh turned up again with a couple-score of his own lads, just like Uglúk figured he would. But we never got the chance to battle Grishnákh for the Halflings. By that time, the Riders were on our trail."

Lugdush heaved a miserable sigh and started picking at the grey, twisting bark of the tree. "You know most of the rest of the story, I guess. The Riders caught up to us and trapped us there on that knoll. Uglúk told us not to worry; that you and your lads were in the woods and we'd break through the horsemen's line when you attacked. And it probably would have worked. Only …"

He waited so long before saying anything more that Mauhúr finally prompted quietly, "Only?"

"Only that's when I fucked up."

Mauhúr hastily came to the conclusion that he should not be looking at Lugdush. Instead he, too, began intensely focusing on tree-bark. Noticing the tiny threads of old spider webs caught in the bark's deep striations, he started digging some of the webs free. Then he realized that now he had webs stuck on his claws. He was rubbing his claws on the bark to get rid of the spider webs while Lugdush began speaking again.

"Uglúk put me in charge of guarding the Halflings. We'd bound their legs, and I didn't think they could go anywhere, but … it was still my responsibility to make sure that they didn't. It must've been a little while before you boys reached the knoll, when a few of the filthy horse-fucks made a sneak attack. They rode in close, got off their horses, crawled up to where some of the Moria lads were camped and killed a handful of 'em. So much for the Cave Uruk's gimlet eyesight! Those idiots never noticed the straw-heads 'till they were running away and jumping back on their horses.

"Well, that really set the Warg in the sheep-fold. The Moria morons were panicking and yelling bloody murder, and Uglúk went running down there to stop 'em from stampeding. I went with him. Thought he might need my help. I never thought to deputize anyone else to stand guard on the Halflings.

"It was only when we got the Moria maggots calmed down, that Uglúk noticed me and said, 'You're supposed to be watching the Halflings.' He ran up the hill again, with me hot-footing it after him—but by the time we got back up there, the hairy-foot bastards were gone.

"Maybe they managed to crawl away on their own. Maybe that evil fuck Grishnákh made off with them. That's what Uglúk thought had happened. That scream we all heard, just before you boys attacked … Uglúk told me he thought that was Grishnákh. Said he figured Grishnákh grabbed the Halflings, tried to get through the horse-boys' line carrying them, and got speared for his pains.

"I _hope_ that's what happened. A spear in his ribs is the least the dungheap deserves, if he's the one who took the Halflings—since it was losing the Halflings right then that got all of our boys killed.

"But it was me who got them killed, too," Lugdush finished flatly. "It was me. Uglúk put me in charge of the prisoners. If I'd stayed with them like Uglúk told me to, Grishnákh could never've grabbed 'em. And most of our boys would be alive today."

"Maybe," Mauhúr muttered. His claws were now free again of cobwebs, but he stared down at them anyway.

He knew there was no point in saying, "It's not your fault." Lugdúsh would know that for the lying comfort it was. Instead he said, "They might be alive if a lot of things happened differently. If Uglúk killed Grishnákh the first time the bastard made trouble. If somebody'd killed that horse-boy scout instead of letting him get away. If I'd pushed our lads harder instead of letting them rest, and we'd reached you sooner. If a lot of things were different."

"Yes," was Lugdush's bitter sigh. "If."

Mauhúr realized that one major portion of the tale remained unknown. He asked, more-or-less thinking aloud, "What happened to the Halflings?"

"That's the big question," Lugdush grimly replied. "The question that Sharkû's going to want answered. It's the main reason I set sentries to watching the Whiteskins; to see if there's any trace of them. To watch out for corpses their size being put on the pyre, or to see if they're alive and the horse-boys have nabbed them." With a dispirited shrug, he continued, "I reckon there hasn't been any sign. The lads would have told me, if there was."

Mauhúr sighed and rubbed his hands over his face. "They may have escaped into the forest," he said, "under cover of the battle. We'd better send out a search party to hunt for them. That way at least we can tell the White Hand we did everything we could."

With a guilty start, it struck him that not once while he and Lugdush talked had he spared a glance for the bonfire. He turned now in his perch in the chestnut tree and stared at the remains of the pyre.

Smoke still crept upward, but only a few small flames still danced here and there. Mauhúr had no way, now, of picking out the body he'd been watching. From this distance the corpses were indistinguishable, all of them reduced to one ruined, blackened mass.

"Right," he said heavily. "We'll check and make sure that the sentries haven't spotted the Halflings. If they haven't, we'll send a hunting party to search the woods. Come on."

 _And then,_ his thoughts continued, _we'll have done everything that I can see for us to do. And I don't want to face that. Because that will mean I've nothing left to do but think._

As Lugdush predicted, their watchers had seen no trace of the missing Halflings. Mauhúr and Lugdush changed out the sentries and assembled a search party of survivors from Uglúk's company and a few of the more reliable of Mauhúr's lads.

In the midst of these labours came one brighter moment. Mauhúr had chosen Khadan, his comrade from their second battle at the knoll, as a member of the search party. Before setting out, Khadan pulled a Rohirrim spear from where it had been strapped at his back. He held it out to Mauhúr and said, "It's the spear you threw and killed that Rider with, just before you got knocked out. I pulled it out of him and used it to fight off another of the bastards while I was getting you back to the woods. I only wounded that one; don't think I killed him, anyway, unless he's bled to death, but … I thought you might want to keep this as a souvenir. Maybe it's a lucky spear."

Mauhúr snorted at the idea. But he said, "In that case, you'd better take it. If it's so lucky, then maybe if you've got it, you'll find the Halflings."

But it turned out the spear was not as lucky as all that.

The day sluggishly waned. As afternoon straggled into the shadows of twilight, their hunting party returned with disheartening news.

Malchdyn, one of Uglúk's surviving comrades, had led the searchers. In grim, angry tones he reported to Lugdush and Mauhúr, "They made it into the woods. That much is obvious. We followed their scent four miles or so along the riverbank. There's one spot where they went down to the water's edge; you can see their footprints in the mud there, clear as anything. But about four miles into the forest, they left the river and headed up this big, rocky hill. Guess they wanted to get the lay of the land. It's a good place for doing that; you can see above the tops of the trees for leagues around, from up there."

Malchdyn paused, scowling. Then he plunged ahead again. "Right up at the top of the hill, we lost their scent. It's as if they climbed to the very top and then they just disappeared. Or they grew wings."

With an answering frown, Lugdush asked, "That's not just because they went down the same way they came up?"

"It could be," Malchdyn said truculently. "But they grew wings somewhere, anyway; at the top of the hill or at the bottom. There's no other whiff of them apart from that one trail. We quested a mile all around that damned hill and never nosed one sniff of Halfling. It's all we can tell you: they climbed up to the top of that hill, and they vanished."

With matched pondering scowls, Lugdush and Mauhúr walked away from the others to discuss their hunters' discoveries.

Mauhúr muttered, hating to hear himself say the words, "I suppose there's nothing more for us to do. Best we can do is go home to Isengard and give the Wizard our report. Maybe his magic can find them. There's more chance of that, than of us accomplishing anything by haring about the woods searching for people who've apparently grown wings."

Lugdush didn't answer at once. He waited so long to speak that Mauhúr finally looked at him in question—and was taken aback by what he saw.

As dark as their situation was, somehow the grimness of Lugdush's expression still took him by surprise. It surprised him and it made him feel afraid.

The look on Lugdush's face made him feel that despite all they had been through, worse was soon to come.

Stupid though the question was in their circumstances, Mauhúr could not stop himself from asking, "What's the matter?"

Lugdush growled. From the sound of that growl, Mauhúr knew that Lugdush also was afraid.

"The matter is," Lugdush said, "that I don't think the Halflings grew wings. I think they were carried away by something with wings. Or by someone riding a creature with wings. I think," he concluded, "they were carried off by a Nazgûl on a flying steed."

 _I was right,_ Mauhúr thought. _There_ was _worse to come._ His mouth gone suddenly dry, he forced out, "You think one's likely to be near?"

Lugdush nodded. "I think one is. Our dungfilth friend Grishnákh kept going on about it. He said a winged Nazgûl was waiting for him over the River. Mind you, he also said the Great Eye isn't letting the winged ones cross to the Western shore. Not yet. But if this thing the Halflings are carrying is so special that Sharkû and the Eye himself both want it, I think this could be _just_ the time for a winged one to cross the River."

For a ludicrous moment Mauhúr felt that the old line from the tales was true: that the blood running through his veins had turned to ice.

He had only encountered a Nazgûl once before; eight years or so ago, when he'd accompanied Uglúk on a trip to Mordor and a recruiting mission to gain Saruman more troops from the lands of the East. There had probably been a league's distance separating him from that Nazgûl, and even so he knew he never wanted to get closer to one of them than that.

Mauhúr swallowed. He said, "Then all the more reason for us to report back to Isengard swiftly. Whether the Halflings are somehow still wandering the woods, or they've been carried off to the Dark Lord, the Wizard will want to know of it soon rather than late."

Frowning in thought, Lugdush asked him quietly, "Will you order us to set out for Isengard tonight? Without waiting until the straw-heads are finished here?"

Mauhúr studied the face of his father's comrade, startled that Lugdush expected him to give the commands. It was a debatable question, he supposed: whether the second-in-command of the senior company took precedence over the commander of the Uruki—and the son of the senior company's slain commander.

In one way, at least, Mauhúr saw that it made sense for Lugdush to give him precedence. Their survivors directly under Lugdush's command numbered only seven, while those under Mauhúr's command numbered twenty.

Mauhúr thought the question through. The very practical threat of the White Wizard's anger marched to the forefront of his mind, pushing aside the lurking clouds that were his fear of the Nazgûl.

He weighed that threat against his responsibilities to his warriors, and to their slain.

"No," he decided. "We stay here tonight. We won't leave until the horse-boys have buggered off, and we can get out there to the battlefield. If the Halflings have been carried off to Lugbúrz already, there's nothing the Wizard can do about that, no matter how soon he learns of it. I won't deny our boys the chance to salvage some mementoes of those we've lost."

Lugdush reached out and clasped his arm, with the hint of a sympathetic smile.

As the day had begun, so it ended. Night drew in upon them to the sound of Rohirrim song.

They changed out their lads on sentry duty as darkness fell. Their returning sentries reported that the horsemen had completed the slain Riders' burial mound. Mounted again on their accursed steeds, the Men now encircled that mound, as the night before they had surrounded the Uruk-Hai atop the knoll. And as they stood vigil for their fallen comrades, they were singing.

Against his will, Mauhúr felt himself shiver at the sound. It sounded different to him from the implacable, hatred-filled strains of the horse-boys' battle chant. Though he could not understand its words, the haunting, lonesome sound made him think of his own people's funeral songs. It seemed weirdly akin to the songs that would rise through the dark in his own village, when he and his lads returned home with the news of their loss.

Only at home, the songs of grief would rise in the soft, warm voices of the wives, the maidens and the children. Not in the harsh, brutal tones of the Riders of Rohan.

He lay down to sleep that night at the foot of the great oak tree, his head slightly sheltered in the curve of one big, gnarled root. The horse-riders' songs drifted wraith-like through his mind. He wondered if they would sing through the night, and he feared that they would. The songs of the Urukan, Urukeen and Urukning* would last through all the night. He guessed it should only be expected that the Whiteskins' mourning song would do the same.

Someone walked toward the oak and lay down at arm's reach away from him. He looked over and saw it was Jaddain, finding shelter for himself in the curve of the next-door root. As Jaddain settled down against the root, he cast Mauhúr a grimace and muttered ruefully to him, "Sleep well."

Mauhúr grimaced back. "Thanks."

His friend looked away from him, turning his face toward the great oak's root. Sometime later, Jaddain stretched out his arm, so that Mauhúr's hand could touch his if Mauhúr reached out as well.

As Jaddain had known he would, Mauhúr understood his message as clearly as if he had spoken.

On the night when Jaddain's family were killed, Jaddain, Mauhúr and Mauhúr's sister had been sleeping cuddled together, nestled in each other's warmth like a pile of Warg pups.

After that night, Jaddain would never sleep like that again. He had never wanted anyone to touch him as he slept, for fear that all of it would happen again. He feared waking from a snuggled heap to find that the people he most loved were stolen from him as he dreamed.

He had never slept close to the other children again. But every night Jaddain and Mauhúr slept near enough together that they could hold hands when both of them reached out their arms.

They had not slept in that way since they left their childhood behind; since before they were old enough to join the company of Uruki.

But on this night, as the Rohirrim mourning song rang coldly through the dark, Mauhúr stretched out his arm to Jaddain. On this night, the two of them fell asleep again holding each other's hands.

* * *

Author's Note (Translations and Definitions):

 _Tark_ : Man/Men of Gondor. According to Tolkien's Appendix F of _The Lord of the Rings_ , "The Languages and Peoples of the Third Age," Tark was "a corrupted version of tarkil, a Westron borrowing from Quenya that literally meant 'high man.'"

 _Orc_ : As Tolkien tells us, "Orc is the form of the name that other races had for this foul people as it was in the language of Rohan." In these chronicles, "Orc" is used only in Rohirric speech or when the Uruk-Hai are deliberately mimicking or mocking the word's usage by the Rohirrim.

 _Lugbúrz_ : Lug=tower and búrz=dark; i.e., the Dark Tower, Barad-dûr, presumably in the language referred to by Tolkien as the Black Speech. In Appendix F, Tolkien writes of this language that, "When Sauron arose again, it became once more the language of Barad-dûr and of the captains of Mordor."

 _Urukan, Urukeen and Urukning_ : Urukan=mature, usually married female Uruk. Urukeen=young, unmarried female Uruk. Urukning=children of the Uruk-Hai; can refer to either male or female. The phrase "Urukan, Urukeen and Urukning" is equivalent to "women and children."


	3. Chapter 3: The Return

_**Chronicles of the Uruk-Hai**_

 _Author's Note:_

For anyone who has not read the first two chapters (although, of course, I encourage you to do so), I should mention that in these chronicles, I am using Uruk (singular) and Uruk-Hai (plural, "Orc-Folk") as terms that include all of the various peoples whom Tolkien describes as "Orcs." Terms marked with an asterisk are translated in a second author's note at the end of the chapter.

 _ **Chapter Three**_

 _ **The Return**_

… _in an open glade among the first trees they came upon the place of the great burning: the ashes were still hot and smoking. Beside it was a great pile of helms and mail, cloven shields, and broken swords, bows and darts and other gear of war. Upon a stake in the middle was set a great goblin head: upon its shattered helm the white badge could still be seen. Further away, not far from the river, where it came streaming out from the edge of the wood, there was a mound. It was newly raised: the raw earth was covered with freshcut turves: about it were planted fifteen spears._

—"The Riders of Rohan," Chapter Two of _The Two Towers_ by J. R. R. Tolkien

* * *

Once again, dawn broke with the call of a Rohirrim horn.

This time one horn sounded alone. Mauhúr guessed it had sounded to waken the sleeping horsemen.

The Riders _had_ finally slept that night, a fact for which he thanked Melkor and all of the Valar in existence. He judged it must have been around the midnight when the Men ceased their mourning songs and retired to rest. His own sleep had seemed blissfully free of dreams for those final few hours of the night, after the enemy's singing dwindled into silence.

All the Uruk-Hai were up and about before ever the horn sounded. None of them had the ill fortune of waking to the horse-boys' horn call. They had breakfasted on their usual rations meal of horse jerky and rye bread, and then waited for the Riders of Rohan to finally make themselves scarce. Mauhúr felt certain that all of the lads were waiting with nervousness and dread akin to his own.

At last, perhaps an hour after that horn greeted the dawn, one of the Uruk-Hai sentries brought word that the Whiteskins had mounted up and were ready to depart.

Even then, the time still dragged at an unbearably leaden pace before a second sentry reported the Men were well and truly gone. This sentry, Uglúk Son of Üneg, told that the horsemen had set forth heading to the north and east. He had waited to bring news of their departure until the last of the Riders disappeared from his sight.

 _It's time,_ Mauhúr thought. Feeling sick with the knowledge of what they would all soon see, he gave the order that those who wished could make their way out to the battlefield.

He continued heavily, "The straw-heads have left a pile of all our boys' gear. You know we can't afford to burden ourselves by trying to salvage everything. But if there's gear or weaponry you can carry without slowing yourself down, or if you want to trade out something of your own for something that belonged to your relative, then do it. All right, then;" he finished, with a last look around at the lads' grim and grief-stricken faces, "let's go."

They walked out from the trees into the grey morning. Mist off the River Entwash crept over the battlefield and blended with the tendrils of smoke still rising from the ruined pyre.

Near the riverbank stood the Men of Rohan's burial mound. It was covered over with fresh-cut turves and surrounded by a perimeter guard of spears, standing sentinel about the mound of the Riders who had wielded them. Mauhúr did a quick count of those spears, feeling darkly furious at how quickly he _could_ count them.

 _Fifteen,_ he thought in bitterness. _We killed only fifteen of them. And they killed eighty-nine of us—plus however many Moria- and Mordor-folk they did in._

His innards blazed with rage and with a passionate lust for revenge. But he told himself, _It is not the time for that. It_ will _be time, when next we face the horse-fucks of Rohan in battle._

The warriors seemed almost like wights themselves as they wandered onto the battlefield. Almost they might have been spirits of the slain, drifting back from the barrow world to visit the scene of their deaths.

Like many of the others, Mauhúr went first to gaze upon their fellow's severed head, mounted atop the pole with the stack of armour and weaponry heaped at its foot.

The head had belonged to Burzum Son of Kalzat. It was easy to see why the horse-boys had chosen him for this honour. He had been the largest of all the Five Villages' main company; a massive warrior whose Troll ancestry was likely a lot more recent in his bloodlines than that of the rest of them. The grey skin of his face now looked almost white. Death seemed to have caught him snarling his defiance. His sightless glare and eternally bared fangs challenged all who approached.

Mauhúr swallowed and laboured to hold his voice steady. He asked, "Do you think we should leave him here? I can't think of any who would wish his head brought home to them for burial. I think he has no relatives left alive."

"I think that's right," agreed Lugdush. "There are none of them left."

Ögiz, another survivor of the main company, said gruffly, "He would enjoy the idea of this, anyway. He'd be glad to know that he's keeping watch over the rest of our lads."

With that decision made, Mauhúr turned reluctantly to confront the pyre.

None of his fellow warriors were attempting to search through what was left. Some stood at the edge of it, eyes closed as if in prayer. Others, mostly the younger Uruki, simply stared on the blackened wreckage. The looks on their faces were painfully lost and forlorn.

Thanks to Jaddain's keen eyes while he had been keeping watch, Mauhúr thought he knew where in the pyre he should search. He crouched down by a place in the smouldering pile that must be about where Jaddain had believed that Uglúk's body lay.

The Whiteskins had clearly cared little for the state in which they left their enemies' remains. Amid the soot and unidentifiable debris, some of the bodies were reduced to mere jumbles of shattered bones. Others were left almost as whole skeletons, scarcely at all disarranged by the spears with which the Riders had stirred the fire.

Near to Mauhúr's knees, an almost-whole skull peered out from the ashes. The formidable tusks in what was left of its jaw made Mauhúr believe it could well be his father's skull.

Mauhúr drew his knife and gingerly used it to sift through the mess adjacent to the skull. Surrounded by a half-collapsed ribcage, he found what he sought. The medallion matching the one Mauhúr himself wore beneath his armour and tunic gleamed up from the bones and soot.

Mauhúr's mother had given those medallions to both of them. Uglúk's medallion she gave to him decades ago, on the day on which they wed. Mauhúr's she gave him when he left home on his first campaign as commander of the Uruki.

Steel discs of two inches across, the medallions were shaped as miniature versions of the shields that the warriors of the Five Villages carried into battle. But neither Uglúk's medallion nor the one worn by his son bore any replica of Saruman's White Hand.

Bleakly Mauhúr thought, _Uglúk's real shield and the one my mother gave him both have failed him now._

But he knew what his father would say in answer to that.

 _When a warrior's fate comes to claim him, no shield or sword or greatness of heart can save him from it._

He sheathed his dagger, unfastened the flask from his belt and poured water from it onto his father's medallion. The hot metal hissed and a column of steam arose, like the smoke from the bonfire replicated in miniature.

When he reached down and picked up the medallion it was still hot enough to give pain. But the heat of it was too little to mark his skin. The cord on which Uglúk had worn the medallion had burned along with Uglúk's clothing and flesh. Mauhúr clutched the tiny shield until it cooled enough to bring no pain to him. Then he carefully closed it away in the pouch at his belt.

For another long moment he gazed at his father's skull. When he stood and walked back to the pile of armour and weapons, he realized to his surprise that both of his hands were trembling.

As he approached the pile of gear, Jaddain said to him quietly, "Over here, Mauhúr. I've found your father's things."

Uglúk's breastplate was too broad in the shoulders for Mauhúr. He knew it made no sense for him to try and wear it. But he figured it would not slow him down to add his father's sword and knife to the armaments he was carrying. As he donned Uglúk's weapons, he thought of a fitting disposition for his father's breastplate.

"His breastplate should fit you," Mauhúr told Jaddain. "Will you exchange it for yours?"

Jaddain's eyes widened in surprise. "You mean it?" he whispered.

"Of course I mean it. He would be glad for you to wear it."

"Then—yes," Jaddain answered, his expression and voice both perilously close to tears. "Thank you. I will be honoured to wear it."

Knowing that once again he could not trust his own voice, Mauhúr helped his friend to remove his breastplate. Then he assisted Jaddain into the breastplate of Uglúk Son of Üürekh, Captain of the Fighting Uruk-Hai.

Before an hour had passed since the Whiteskins rode from the battlefield, the warriors of the Five Villages set forth as well. With Mauhúr and Lugdush at their head, they ran alongside the southern edge of the forest, following the most direct route to Isengard.

Mauhúr felt intense relief at being on the move again. It felt so good to have somethingthey could do once more instead of simply being forced to wait.

So long as they kept moving, he could force down his grief and despair. He could focus instead on the promise of the future: on the battles that lay ahead, and the chances those battles offered them of seizing vengeance for their slain.

The noon was past when suddenly a harsh-voiced, fierce message drove into Mauhúr's mind.

 _Mauhúr! Warn Lugdush. Saruman is coming. He'll want a report. Be ready._

Mauhúr gasped. Although he did not slow his run, he put a hand to his forehead, unable to believe what he'd just heard.

In amazement and wonder, he thought, _That message came from Uglúk!_

Lugdush frowned over at him and demanded, "What's wrong?"

Obediently, though still not sure if he could believe in what he was saying, Mauhúr relayed, "The White Hand is coming for our report. Uglúk says to tell you to be ready."

Lugdush's startled look changed into a grin. "Does he, then?" Lugdush exclaimed. "Does he, indeed! Well, that's some Valar-damned fine news, there, anyway!" Abruptly sobering, he went on, "You let me do the talking with Sharkû. You don't need to say anything unless he asks you directly."

Mauhúr nodded, his mouth feeling ever-so-slightly dry. "Right."

It would not be the first time he had met the White Wizard of Isengard. But it was the first time he would do so without his father standing by his side.

 _Although,_ he thought, in excitement blending with fear, _if I can believe what I thought I heard, perhaps my father is by my side, after all._

At one instant there was no one ahead of them; just a mighty boulder sprawling out from under the eaves of the trees. At the next instant, he was there, leaning casually against the boulder's slope. To all seemings he was a tall, old Man, snowy of hair and beard, clad in a robe of white and a cloak of perhaps all colours or of no colour at all.

Together, Lugdush and Mauhúr drew to an instant halt. Lugdush turned and yelled to their troops, "Halt! Company will stand to attention!"

As the warriors of the Five Villages obeyed, and Lugdush turned once more to face him, Saruman of the White Hand spoke.

His voice, as always, seemed to Mauhúr to be the most beauteous of music. That music sounded with promises of happiness, and love, and peace. It seemed to be everything that the loathsome din of the horse-riders' songs was not.

The White Wizard gently addressed the Uruk-Hai officers, "You gentlemen may be at ease. Will you come here and speak with me?"

The two of them obeyed and walked closer to their master. Deep within himself, Mauhúr Son of Uglúk felt very far from at ease.

"Where is your captain?" Saruman inquired.

Lugdush reported stiffly, "Uglúk Son of Üürekh is slain, my lord, as are nine-tenths of our company. A Horselord troop encircled us. Only these few of us now live to fight for you again."

"I see."

The White Hand's dark eyes looked thoughtful and a trifle wearied, but Mauhúr could see no trace of sorrow in their depths. Beneath the sweet enchantment of the Wizard's voice, another strain ran through the music in Mauhúr's mind: bitter anger that their master did not believe Uglúk's death deserved even one statement of regret.

"And what can you tell me of your mission?"

"We seized the two Halflings at the Great River and were bringing them to you. Under cover of the battle they fled into Fangorn. We tracked them to a hill four miles deep into the forest. At the top of the hill their scent was lost. It is my belief, my lord, that from that hilltop they were carried off by a Nazgûl into Mordor."

Saruman of the White Hand stood up to his full height, no longer leaning against the boulder. Mauhúr could see no emotion on the Wizard's face, but he felt a chill that raced through the air about him. No clouds came, but he felt a darkening of the sun; no wind blew, but he felt a breeze from the barrow world slicing through his bones.

The Wizard demanded, "Did any of you see this Nazgûl?"

"No, my lord."

"Did any of you feel his presence?"

"We did not, my lord."

"Then why is it that you believe…?"

"My lord, a Captain Grishnákh was sent forth from Mordor with a company of two score, with orders to bring the Halflings to Lugbúrz. They dogged our steps from the Great River and would have given battle for possession of the Halflings. Grishnákh and his rabble are slain by the same Riders who slew our warriors. But Grishnákh spoke of a flying Nazgûl waiting across the River. I believe that Nazgûl came amongst us and stole the Halflings out of our grasp and yours."

His voice sounding again as sweet as a caress, the White Hand answered, "Very well. Report to General Wulfgar on your return to Isengard, that he may assign your surviving warriors to places in another regiment."

"Yes, my lord."

"You had best make haste," the melodious voice went on. "You have little time. The Army of Isengard marches forth on the third night from now, to the destruction of Rohan."

The moment he spoke those words, the White Wizard vanished from their sight.

Mauhúr gasped in a breath. He felt a trickle of sweat along the side of his neck, and he felt fury coiling in his guts.

He thought, _Uglúk was one of the first Uruk leaders to throw in his lot with Saruman. He convinced scores of his relatives, neighbours and allies to join up along with him, and he went on recruiting missions for the White Wizard from Gundabad to Khand. And Sharkû won't acknowledge his death with so much as a single "I am sorry for your loss"?_

Lugdush, beside him, seemed to be going through similar reactions. The old warrior took off his helmet, scratched his head for a moment and then commenced mopping sweat off his brow.

"Melkor's balls," Lugdush grumbled. "I _hate_ it when I have to talk with him." He shook his head as he donned his helmet again. "Wulfgar Wizard's Son!" Lugdush snarled, spitting onto the ground between his feet. "To think that our companies' fate should be in the hands of that evil, arrogant filth! It would make your father turn in his grave, if he had one."

"No, it wouldn't," Mauhúr answered, with a feeling of certainty. "My father would tell you that Wulfgar matters nothing. _He matters nothing._ And so does the question of whose banner we follow. What matters is that we still have our chance to fight. To kill. And to avenge our own."

Lugdush studied him, and then nodded, with a faint, lopsided smile.

"You're right," agreed Lugdush. "That is exactly what he would say."

Wheeling around toward their troops again, Uglúk's second-in-command bellowed, "All right, you lot, what are you lounging around here for? We're legging it back to Isengard. The Army of the White Hand marches forth in three nights' time. And if we get there late, we'll miss the party."

* * *

The Uruk-Hai of the Five Villages ran through that day, through the night, and through the day that followed. As afternoon dwindled on the second day, they reached Isengard at last.

Mauhúr and Lugdush sent the others on ahead to their villages. The two of them grudgingly made their way to the office on the second storey of the Tower of Orthanc: the office of the Man universally known behind his back as Wulfgar Wizard's Son.

The captain-general of Saruman's armies boasted no magical music in his voice. His face was almost a perfect copy of the Wizard's, but there, it seemed, the likeness between them ceased.

His hair and beard were black as Saruman's were white. He commanded not through enchantments in his words—nor, as Uglúk had frequently remarked, through any achievement of his own—but through the simple fact that the White Hand had placed him in command.

Like everyone else, Mauhúr had no real notion if General Wulfgar was truly Saruman's son. He didn't know if Wizards sired offspring, or if they even possessed the parts needful to do so. And he did not especially care to learn the answers to those questions.

But he felt certain that if Wulfgar Wizard's Son were ever to fall in battle, not one soul out of all the hosts of Isengard would mourn for him—except, perhaps, for Saruman himself.

Lugdush and Mauhúr stood at attention before the general's desk. The Wizard's Son regarded them like they were maggots wriggling in the exploded belly of a corpse.

"Very well," Wulfgar said, when he had heard their report. "The survivors of your companies will be reassigned to the North Khand regiment, under command of Captain Kharga."

"The North Khand regiment," Lugdush repeated. He sounded as through Wulfgar were compelling him to eat that same rotting corpse thick with maggots. "With respect, sir," he went on, with no discernible respect in his voice, "there is another Rhûn regiment, under command of Captain Tsamkhag. It will make more sense to assign us to them. We share the same language, and—"

General Wulfgar interrupted him, "You share the Common Tongue with all of the forces of Isengard; Men-folk and Uruk-Hai alike. Do you believe yourselves too elite a body for you to use the Common Tongue? A regiment which allows itself to be all-but wiped out has no further claim to be called an elite troop."

"No, sir," growled Lugdush, "we are not too good to use the Common Tongue."

"I am glad you admit it. Your late commander may have enjoyed the especial favour of Saruman, but with his death and the deaths of most of your regiment, those privileges in which you formerly basked are ended. An army of ten thousands will march forth in the campaign ahead of us; ten thousands that include the Dynion* Men as well as Uruk-Hai from the remotest fastnesses of Middle Earth. Your only concern must be to fight for the Lord Saruman, not to trouble his captain-general with whether your surviving few march beside your nearest neighbours."

"Yes, sir," Mauhúr grated. As he eyed his fellow officer, the old veteran's bared fangs and one-eyed glare made Mauhúr wonder if they could get out of there before Lugdush murdered the general. "Have we your permission to depart? We must return to our villages for the funeral of our comrades."

"Yes," said the Wizard's Son, his tone as dismissive as his words. "You have such permission. Take care that your warriors rest enough before our army's departure, that they may not be slain as easily as were their comrades."

 _If we don't get out of here now,_ thought Mauhúr, _I'm going to be the one who murders the sodding general._ "Yes, sir," he managed to force out again. He seized Lugdush by the arm and all-but dragged him from the room.

As they stomped along the corridor toward the spiralling stairs, Lugdush hissed, "I hope the North Khand regiment will march behind our glorious general, when the Army of Saruman sets forth. I'll be watching for any chance I get to plant a spear in his back."

"He doesn't matter," Mauhúr insisted quietly, just as he had said back at the eaves of the forest. "Wulfgar does not matter. Would you be fuming over him all the while as we bid our comrades farewell?"

Lugdush paused to gaze at Mauhúr before starting down the stairs. "You are right," the old warrior admitted. "As usual."

Mauhúr suppressed a sigh as he recalled that this was just the sort of comment Lugdush used to make to Uglúk.

They legged it out of the tower, across the wide courtyard and to the sally port at the farthest northern extent of Isengard's great wall. As they climbed the familiar trail into the foothills, Mauhúr strove to banish from his mind all tension caused by the White Wizard and his hypothetical son.

He knew it was a fruitless quest. But still he tried to forget what awaited them, and to concentrate only on the sights and sounds of the climb.

Scarcely a furlong outside the wall of the fortress they crossed the stone footbridge over the West Fork of Isen, where it came racing down from the hills. Mauhúr realized to his surprise that the river was higher by far than on the day they left home, a week or so ago. A heavy rain, he thought, might raise the water level over the bridge itself.

He said to Lugdush as they walked across the bridge, "I don't remember when I last saw the water this high."

Lugdush grunted. "Makes sense, I guess, with the warm weather we've been having. Must be a lot of snow-melt up there in the mountains."

The path toward their villages led alongside Isen's main branch as it rushed down to the valley from out of its largest source: the Great Spring at Mauhúr and Lugdush's village. Mauhúr fought to focus his thoughts on only the roaring of the river: a welcoming, well-remembered sound that sang to him of his home.

He and Lugdush had agreed before sending their companies on ahead that the survivors would summon all of their people to meet at the centre of Great Spring Village. On any ordinary return from battle, the commanders would make their way to each village in turn, meeting house-by-house with every family that had suffered loss. But their situation now was desperately far from ordinary. If Mauhúr and Lugdush had to visit every bereaved family in each of the Five Villages, it would take them all the night—and the simple fact was that they did not have the time.

Tonight they had to hold the funeral of their lost comrades, and by tradition their vigil should last from sunset until the sunrise. They had no choice but to hold the ceremony this night. On the next night, all of Saruman's army would march from Isengard.

So when they reached the first valley nestled in the hills, at the side of the Great Spring, their assembled people were waiting for them. The Uruk-Hai of the Five Villages awaited them in the village that Uglúk Son of Üürekh had founded when he came to work for Saruman the White, near thirty years before.

Lugdush stepped back to let Mauhúr take the lead. They walked past the Great Spring, its gush and growl and the spray of its waters further signs that welcomed them home.

The first house beside the spring was the house of Uglúk. There, in front of the house, all of Mauhúr's family waited for him.

His sister Búrzgil's children must have been sitting on the ground while they waited; all of them except the baby, his namesake little Mauhúr, who was snuggled in Búrzgil's arms. Mauhúr saw his two older nephews and his three nieces scrambling to their feet.

His little brother Sergilel had not been sitting. Mauhúr smiled at the determination he saw in Sergilel's stance. Young and small though he was, he knew what was expected of him as the son of a slain warrior-chief.

As the Great Spring roared its greeting, Mauhúr strode to his mother, Ghâshgil Daughter of Karangil, who stood at the forefront of them all.

He felt a surge of love and pride as he drew near to her: pride in her fierce dignity, bold and unbowed by her grief. He met the uncompromising gaze of his mother's golden eyes and he spoke the words that she already knew: "Uglúk Son of Üürekh is dead."

Ghâshgil answered him quietly, "I felt it." Then she asked, as tradition dictated, "Did he die well?"

"He did. He died a hero."

He saw a flicker of emotion on his mother's face before she told him, "There will be time for you to tell me of it, after you have greeted the others."

By "the others," he knew, she meant all the surviving people of the Five Villages. He wondered if there really would be time.

Her words had given him permission to begin the daunting rounds of greetings. But there was still one topic of which he felt the need to ask her. The question sounded ridiculous to his ears, but he forced himself to ask it. "Have you heard from him since his death?"

Ghâshgil Daughter of Karangil studied her son's face. Her slightly raised eyebrows were the only visible sign of her surprise. "Heard from him? No, I have not. Have you?"

"I have. I've had one message from him."

Suddenly and unexpectedly, his mother smiled. "That is well," she told him. "That is well indeed."

Mother and son performed the ritual embrace, hands clasping each other's arms and forehead pressed to forehead. As they stepped apart, Mauhúr thought that there was one thing more he should do. From the pouch at his belt he took his father's medallion and held it out to her.

Sorrow glimmered in her eyes as she took the medallion from him. She hid that emotion again as she looked downward, gazing at the medallion where it rested in her cupped hands.

Mauhúr performed the embrace with the adults of his family each in turn. He went first to his brother-in-law Shúrga, the lieutenant of their Warg Riding company. Next was Shúrga's wife, Mauhúr's elder sister Búrzgil. Mauhúr touched foreheads with her and clasped her arms, but she did not clasp his arms in return, since she was holding his nearly-asleep youngest nephew. His infant namesake gave him a sleepy glare. The gaggle of other nephews and nieces were not close enough relatives to the slain warrior that he must perform the embrace with them, but he nodded to them and all of them nodded solemnly back.

He went next to his younger sister Sargil. In their embrace he felt her trembling, and he could guess at the fierce struggle by which she was holding back her tears.

He felt no trembling from Varghúr, his father's secondary wife. He had expected none. Never would Varghúr allow herself to show less courage and dignity than Uglúk's primary wife.

The last of his family whom he had to greet was Varghúr's son Sergilel, his seven-year-old half-brother. Mauhúr knelt down before the boy and Sergilel stepped toward him.

The thought hit Mauhúr as it never had before how much Sergilel resembled their father. His complexion was a darker version of his mother's luminous grey, rather than Uglúk and Mauhúr's deep black. But his dark grey eyes were like those of Uglúk and Mauhúr. And the little boy's face, Mauhúr thought now, seemed that of an Uglúk in miniature, down to the stubborn set of his jaw and his pugnaciously out-thrust tusks.

The brothers performed the ritual embrace. Before Mauhúr could pull back and stand up again, his little brother lunged forward and gave him a thoroughly non-ritual hug.

Mauhúr stroked Sergilel's back. He cast a faint smile up at Varghúr, who had a grim, embarrassed look on her face.

Sergilel had been mute since his birth. But that lack of voice was no handicap, for his strength in thought-speech was such that he could make himself heard by any of the Uruk-Hai he addressed. Mauhúr heard his little brother's voice in his mind now, asking him, _Father isn't coming home again, is he?_

He couldn't always make his thought-messages be heard by Sergilel in return. Mauhúr answered aloud, "No, little one. He isn't. I'm sorry."

Sergilel squeezed his arms around Mauhúr even tighter than before, and thought, _But I'm glad you're home._

"Yes," Mauhúr whispered to him. "I'm glad I'm home."

He extricated himself from his little brother's hug and gripped the boy's shoulders for one moment longer. Then Mauhúr Son of Uglúk rose to his feet and went to give his condolences to all the bereaved people of their villages.

He would never, in any way, have wished for the disasters that had befallen them. But in one pathetic sense, he grimly admitted to himself, the way things were for them now came as a relief to him.

Their dead were just too many. Their losses were too huge for him to feel each death as keenly as he would have felt them, had each one come on its own. As he and Lugdush made their way amidst the crowd of the Five Villages' people, the hundreds of grief-haunted faces seemed almost to merge into one. The softly-spoken words of sorrow came by rote; "I am sorry for your loss" spoken over and over again.

One face amongst the people who greeted him decidedly did stand out from all the others. Kharorod, their warrior he had sent home wounded from the battle at the Fords, came to him to exchange the embrace, and Mauhúr felt a jolt of bittersweet relief on seeing him. Kharorod's face looked desperately pallid and drawn. But he was alive and on his feet, which was far more than Mauhúr had expected.

As they stepped apart again, Kharorod muttered hoarsely, "I'm sorry I wasn't there with you."

If he had been in their fights at the knoll, Mauhúr thought there was a better than even chance that Kharorod would now be dead. Very likely, he believed, that was the result for which Kharorod was hoping.

Mauhúr told him, "You still live to fight in our next battle. That is something for which we can be thankful."

"Yes," Kharorod agreed, with a grim smile. He and his commander both knew it was close to certain that their next battle would be the one that killed him.

At last there came a time when it seemed that Mauhúr must have greeted everyone. The people around him now were milling about, greeting each other and joining in quiet-voiced conversation. But no one was still pressing forward to exchange the ritual embrace with him.

He suddenly realized that his mother stood by his side. Ghâshgil said to him, "The sun isn't quite setting yet. You have a little time. We have been heating water for you. Come and I will help you to wash, and you can tell me of your father." She raised her voice and called out to Jaddain, who stood nearby in conversation with Uli and the young archer's mother, "Jaddain, you too. Come along. You know you need to wash before the funeral."

Jaddain looked over and smiled wearily at them. He bade goodbye to Uli and his mother and hurried over. In silence, Ghâshgil, Mauhúr and Jaddain walked to the big, wooden tub set out in the yard behind Uglúk's house.

Mauhúr and Jaddain set about removing their armour and clothing, while the wives and younger daughter of Uglúk brought bucket after bucket of water to pour into the tub. Ghâshgil and Sargil hurried in and out through the house's back door bringing water they fetched from the cauldron on the hearth, while Varghúr brought water from the Great Spring to prevent the bath being too scalding.

Mauhúr made certain that he retained an unsmiling face when he noticed the bashful glances Jaddain and Sargil cast at each other. He also noticed that Sargil hastily averted her gaze when Jaddain began stripping out of his clothes. His little sister showed notably more discretion now than she had displayed toward her brother's best friend until a few months before.

The sting of the water's heat felt glorious as Mauhúr settled into it. But immediately he thought of how strange it seemed for them to be bathing here now, in their current circumstances—in the same big, old tub that had long ago been the scene of many a vigorous splash war between Mauhúr, Jaddain, and most of the other village children.

Jaddain muttered, "There will likely be a lot of us late for the funeral tonight, with everyone needing to wash up beforehand."

Mauhúr nodded. "There will be no shame in that, since all of us know the reason for it."

All of the surviving warriors, as was expected of them, had returned home with the grime of battle still thick upon them. It would have done no honour to their prowess, nor to the memory of their slain, for them to clean themselves before their people welcomed them home. They owed it to all of their folk to let them see, touch and smell the proof of the combat through which their warriors had laboured and returned.

But now that the ritual of their return was accomplished, their roles were changed. Just as unthinkable as it would have been for them to clean up before returning home, was the concept of attending their comrades' funeral without removing the filth of the fighting.

As she did every time when Mauhúr bathed on his return from combat, his mother set about washing his hair for him. That duty did not take her long, for Mauhúr kept his hair cropped short enough to be concealed by his helmet and sheltered from the muck of battle.

He knew his mother and all of the others about them felt the same void as he was feeling now. He knew all of them were remembering that on every other occasion when their troops had returned from battle, Ghâshgil Daughter of Karangil had performed the treasured duty of washing her husband's hair.

Performing that task for Uglúk had taken far longer than doing the same for their son. Mauhúr remembered how, as a child, he had loved to watch as his mother washed his father's hair. It had fascinated him, watching how swiftly and deftly her fingers worked as she undid Uglúk's braids. He recalled feeling almost entranced by the contrast of his mother's gold-brown skin against his father's long, black hair. He remembered how he used to wonder about all the heroic stories that must lie behind the blood and filth that Ghâshgil carefully worked loose from Uglúk's hair, and that spread into the water of the bath in a red-black cloud.

"Here, Jaddain," Ghâshgil said brusquely now, "I will help you with your hair."

Jad could certainly use more assistance with that task than could Mauhúr, since he allowed his reddish brown locks to grow even longer than Uglúk had worn his hair. Mauhúr again restrained a smile as he thought of a second reason for his mother's tending to Jaddain's hair, besides her need to distract herself from the pain of her husband's absence.

She had to have noticed, just as Mauhúr had, the shy little looks that Sargil was casting at Jaddain—and her hesitant, eager poise that suggested the Urukeen was about to thrust herself forward and offer to help him wash.

Sargil had helped Jaddain wash his hair plenty of times before. But now she was no longer a child, and now her mother needed to be as vigilant as a dragon.

As Ghâshgil began undoing Jaddain's braids, she told Mauhúr quietly, "Tell us now of Uglúk's death."

So Mauhúr told the tale, while Uglúk's wives and younger daughter listened in silence and the bath water cooled in the advancing evening's chill.

They could still see a sliver of sun on the western horizon when Mauhúr and Jaddain, clad now in clean tunics and breeches, climbed to the cemetery on the ridge. Mauhúr thought it felt almost unnatural to be clean again, and freed from the weight of his armour.

Their fellow warriors were gathered around the highest point of the ridge. Others had been climbing the trail from Great Spring Village both before and behind them. They saw more approaching the ridge from the north and west, the direction of the other villages.

Visible here and there, amidst the assembled Uruk-Hai, were the low, mounded graves of their people whose remains were buried here: Urukan, Urukeen, Urukning*, and those few of their warriors who had died at home, or whose bodies had been brought home for burial. And standing all along the ridge, like additional mourners joining in their funeral ceremonies, were the cairns built to the memory of their warriors who fell in battle and whose bodies were not returned. The cairns honoured all who had fallen thus since Uglúk led his family and followers here from their home on the shores of Köz Kögildir*, twenty-eight years before.

The cairn they would build tonight, constructed of one stone for each warrior who had not returned from this campaign, would be the largest of all.

This highest place on the ridge would have been the location of Uglúk's grave, in the unlikely circumstance of his dying at home, or of his body being returned. But Mauhúr knew his father would be glad for his memory to be marked by a cairn, not by a grave. Uglúk would be glad to know that his bones lay scattered on some battlefield, like those of so many Fighting Uruk-Hai who were slain under his command.

Lugdush made his way toward them when he spotted Mauhúr and Jaddain approaching. Looking oddly embarrassed, he handed Mauhúr a rock large enough that Mauhúr's hands could not quite meet about it. Gruffly Lugdush said, "I picked this out for your father, if you think it will do for him."

Mauhúr stared down at the rock in his hands. At the bizarre thought that this lump of stone could symbolize his father's life in any way, he was hit with the unacceptable urge not only to cry, but also to laugh.

He forced himself to simply say, "It will do very well."

"There is one for you to give as well, if you will do it," Lugdush went on, to Jaddain. "Burzum Son of Kalzat has no one to place a stone in his name. Will you do that for him?"

"I will, of course," Jaddain acknowledged. Mauhúr did not doubt that his friend's thoughts, just as his own, had leapt to the memory of their comrade's severed head, left on guard above the battlefield beside the pyre of their slain.

Following Lugdush's lead, Mauhúr and Jaddain walked with him over to the old Uruk who sat on guard beside a dwindling pile of rocks: Talaan Son of Tsasan. He sat on a folding camp stool, with his cane lying on the ground at his side and his bound left foot propped up on a smaller stool. Mauhúr grimaced as he thought of the pain it must have cost Talaan to labour his way up to the ridge.

Talaan Son of Tsasan was one of only two Uruk-Hai of their villages in that most unenviable of roles: warriors who yet lived but whose physical ailments prevented them from going into battle. For five or six years now Talaan's legs and feet had betrayed him with the combined assault of rheumatic knees and excruciating gout. He could barely even walk, let alone manage the mobility he would need in a fight.

Holding him back from killing himself at the shame of it was the fact that he could still be of use to his people. He was an archer of great skill, and his arms and hands retained their accustomed power and agility. Ever since his legs had failed him, Uglúk had assigned him the task of instructing the Urukning boys, to teach them the foundations of archery as part of their training to enter the Uruki company.

And tonight Talaan was the keeper of the rocks that symbolized their dead. As Lugdush, Jaddain and Mauhúr drew near to him and Jaddain picked up one of the stones, Talaan told them, "We're almost all assembled. There are only nine stones left to be chosen."

Mauhúr nodded and asked, "How many do we mourn?"

"Ninety-six," Talaan answered him. "Seventy-five in the main company, eighteen in yours, and three of the Warg Riders, slain in the battle at the Fords."

Mauhúr nodded back to him and then gazed around at their assembled warriors. Off near the edge of those gathered he noticed the other Uruk who, like Talaan Son of Tsasan, could no longer go into battle. He was Balaj Son of Tözu, and his plight was even worse than Talaan's.

Balaj had gone blind. His blindness had come not even through any wounding, which would at least have brought some honour with it. It came upon him only through his body's advancing age. Balaj would assuredly have thrown away his life as others had done in like circumstances, simply by ensuring that he did not return from the last battle his body permitted him to fight. But Balaj's daughter had begged him to stay alive for her, and to help her to care for her children and grand-children, after both her husband and son-in-law were slain.

Balaj had made that sacrifice for his daughter. Now he endured the humiliation of being an Uruk dwelling in the realm of the Urukan, Urukeen and Urukning. Now he had to suffer the shame of life without battle, of his comrades marching forth on campaign after campaign, while he sat at home minding his great-grand-babies and tending the hearth.

Tonight, at least, Balaj Son of Tözu could take his place with his comrades once again. His grandson Tözu, not quite yet old enough to serve in the Uruki regiment, tonight had the dispensation of being allowed to join the warriors' ceremony instead of taking part with the wives, maidens and other children. Young Tözu had this right as his grandfather's companion, having guided the old Uruk's blinded steps up to the cemetery on the ridge.

Another taking part with them tonight, who would normally be held too young to do so, was Kalkan Son of Tsaiz. He would not be old enough to join the Uruki until next year. Kalkan was here as the primary mourner for his elder brother Tsas, the Uruki warrior who fell in their battle at the Fords of Isen.

Mauhúr noticed Kalkan now, nearby him in the crowd. He cast the youth an encouraging smile, and Kalkan acknowledged this with a very nervous-looking nod.

Mauhúr made his way through the assembled warriors in order to speak with the boy. Since Tsas had died before any of their other slain, tradition held that his name should be spoken first of all in their ceremony tonight. He wanted to make certain Tsas' brother was ready for that.

Some little while after Mauhúr received young Kalkan's assurance on the question, he spotted Lugdush again heading toward him. The old veteran reported, "We can begin. All of us are here."

Looking to the west, Mauhúr saw still a hint of sunset's glow in the sky. He nodded and sought to summon to himself all the serenity of mind that he could muster. Then he took his conch shell horn and blew on it one long note.

The quiet talking along the ridgetop silenced. Mauhúr glanced again to Kalkan, and the young Uruk stepped forward to the place that would hold their cairn. Despite his earlier nerves, the voice of the boy sounded clear and strong as he proclaimed his brother's name: "Tsas Son of Tsaiz."

Kalkan set down the rock that he held, and their ceremony had begun. The relatives of their three Warg Riders followed.

Once those three were named and their stones set in place, the warriors of the Five Villages made no attempt to list their fallen from the battles of the knoll in the order in which they fell. It was a largely orderly process as the Uruk who stood nearest to their growing cairn stepped forward to state his relative's name and place his stone, and then stepped aside for the next.

Every name woke its echoes of grief for Mauhúr. But some of them sounded more bitterly in his ears.

Steady though young Uli's voice was as he spoke the names of his three uncles, in his mind Mauhúr heard again the lad's broken sobbing after the battle. "Steady" was not a word that could describe the voice of Askar Son of Azof, when he spoke the names of his two sons. Raw pain still sounded clearly in the growl with which he forced himself to utter their names.

At last Jaddain stepped from Mauhúr's side to speak the name and place the stone of Burzum Son of Kalzat. Ninety-five of their stones had been placed, and all but one name had been spoken.

Mauhúr went to the cairn in his turn and spoke the final name. "Uglúk Son of Üürekh."

Carefully he settled Uglúk's stone into its place at the top of the cairn.

He had a ludicrous, appalling fear that the damnable cairn would instantly fall apart. But he knew his fear was unwarranted. Many of their survivors had taken part in large numbers of funerals. By now they ought to have mastered the art of cairn-building. Besides, their cairn needed only to survive unaided through this one night. On the morrow, a party of the elder Urukan would come bringing mortar they had blended to hold the cairn's stones together.

Mauhúr had one further duty to perform in the night's ceremony. As primary mourner for the highest-ranking warrior among their slain, it was for him to compose and recite the verses that honoured their loss.

He remembered once, many years ago when he was newly inducted into the Uruki company, telling his father he was afraid that when this task was his, no verses at all would come into his mind.

He remembered Uglúk smiling and clasping his shoulder. His father had assured him, "You will have no trouble when the time comes. You know the metre and the rhyme-scheme that are expected. When you need them, the words will come to you, just as they've always come to me."

Mauhúr had believed him, as he had believed almost everything his father told him. At Uglúk's assurance, he had ceased to fear that he would fail in this. Now, as he faced the cairn of ninety-six stones and the darkened eastern sky beyond, the words indeed came to him when he needed them. They came to him as though they had always been in his mind, and he had simply never noticed them.

Mauhúr Son of Uglúk spoke:

 _Long howl the Wargs_

 _Names of the never-returned._

 _Long feast the birds_

 _Thick on the fields of the slain._

 _Short are our days_

 _Moments of triumph and love._

 _Short be the time_

 _Until I see you again._

 _Long may our names_

 _Live at the end of our days._

 _Short be my wait_

 _Until you welcome me home.**_

They were all the words that came to him. With them, the warriors' part in the ceremony of the night was over, save for the duty of vigil-keeping that was theirs until the dawn.

The ceremony ended for them as it began. Mauhúr blew, again, one note upon his horn.

The warriors all sat down where they had stood, to begin their night of vigil. Mauhúr caught Lugdush's gaze as they settled onto the ground, and Lugdush gave him an approving smile and a nod.

Seeing that reaction from his father's old comrade, it felt to Mauhúr almost as though he had received the same approval from Uglúk himself.

Night settled down upon them. Full dark reached them, and then the glow of firelight rose up from Great Spring Village. The wives, maidens and children had lit their bonfire and were commencing their part in the rituals of the night.

Mauhúr's memories journeyed back to the many times when he had been there with them, sitting watching the bonfire along with all of the Urukan, Urukeen, and his fellow Urukning.

The first few funerals he remembered attending here had been those of warriors not particularly close to his family. For him they had been times less of grief than of wonder and fascination.

He remembered watching the firelight play on the faces of those around him; listening intently to the songs that he might learn their words and join in the singing. He remembered gazing upward in the darkness to the cemetery ridge, where his father and the other warriors sat in their night-long vigil.

The first song had always been his favourite—and not simply because it _did_ come first, and thus he had always been still fully alert when it was sung.

Tonight that song rose to them from the village in two voices: the voice of his mother, and that of his father's secondary wife. Mauhúr smiled a little as he heard the two of them singing together.

Ghâshgil had been under no obligation to permit Varghúr to sing with her. But it was typical of her that she had done so.

There were challenges enough ahead of her. She must see very well the wisdom of maintaining peaceable relations in her household. One method of achieving that was by granting honour and recognition to her fellow wife.

Staring into the dark of the east, Mauhúr listened to the song.

 _We are ghosts together tonight_

 _You the ghost of life, I the ghost of hope_

 _Soon we will be ghosts together in truth._

 _You will welcome me_

 _Your cold hand taking mine_

 _You will welcome me with your call_

 _My voice answering yours._

 _The living will hear our voices_

 _As winds in the tall pines_

 _They will see us race each other_

 _As waves on Köz Kögildir._

 _We will be ghosts together_

 _And when we are_

 _All the dead will smile._

The other Urukan took up the words with them as they sang it through a second time. On the third time through, the Urukeen and Urukning joined in.

Other songs followed in their prescribed order: the Hymn to Köz Kögildir, and the Song of the Origins, in all of its eighty-nine verses. Then it was the time for each slain warrior's lineage to be sung.

Mauhúr suddenly wondered if Burzum Son of Kalzat had anyone to sing his lineage for him. Had he told his line of descent to any of the Urukan or Urukeen? Or would Burzum's lineage forever remain unsung?

As Uglúk had been the leader of all who were slain in their recent battles, his line of descent was the first to be sung. Sitting there on the ridge far above the bonfire and the singers, Mauhúr listened to hear who of his family would sing his father's lineage.

He caught his breath and his heart leapt in surprise and pride as he recognized the voice that followed. Rising clear and pure through the dark, the voice was that of his young sister, Sargil Daughter of Ghâshgil.

It impressed and moved him that their mother had chosen her, and that Sargil was so well able to meet the challenge. Her voice did not falter as she sang the list of names back through the generations.

She was too far from him for Mauhúr to hear every name with equal clarity, and his attention wandered now and again as his sister sang them back in time through the names and deeds of his longfathers. But he saw no reason to doubt that she had memorized the lineage with accuracy. Whenever he listened more intently, the details he heard her sing were the same as the list of forebears that he had committed to his memory.

Sargil sang them back to ten generations before Uglúk, to their longfather Mauhúr Son of Aadar, who settled with his followers on the shore of Köz Kögildir on land granted to him in reward for his service to King Juldiz of Gazar Üür.* Back she sang them seven generations further, to Izala Son of Kusihlwa, who journeyed from the Southlands to join the forces of Mirza Baavgai of Khand-Bürenkhii* in the War Against the West. Far back she led them through all of the thirty-eight generations before Uglúk Son of Üürekh, back to their first longfather whose life's details they yet knew: Thungela Son of Uhlungulu, who distinguished himself among the bodyguard of King Thabeng-Kauta of Umbar in the last waning years of the Second Age.

At last Sargil brought the song of their longfathers to its close. Mauhúr wished he was free to run down the hill to the village in that moment and hug his little sister for carrying out that duty so flawlessly. He did not only want to hug her; he wanted to pick her up and swing her around through the air, just as he used to do years ago. He grinned a little to himself as he thought of how Sargil's proud young dignity would be offended, did she know he was imagining still treating her so like a child.

Mauhúr's focus wandered to and from the words of the singing below, as warrior after warrior's lineage was sung. Few indeed of the lineages, he noted with pride, continued for as far back in time as the list of Uglúk's longfathers had done. Only three others of the warriors they honoured that night had lines for which memory was preserved as far into the past as that of his own family.

He chided himself for his vanity. It was foolish to feel he had some share in the accomplishment, when mere accidents of fortune had led to his longfathers' names being retained in their family's memory when so many others' were not.

But foolish or no, it yet sent a warm glow of pride through him as he thought that the line of Uglúk Son of Üürekh was remembered into depths of the past greater than those of most kings of Middle Earth.

It was past the midnight when the singing of lineages ceased. The line of Burzum Son of Kalzat had not been sung, and Mauhúr felt a regret at that almost greater than his regret at Burzum's loss.

He thought, _We should have seen that peril and forestalled it. My father or I should have taken steps to ensure that Burzum's lineage would not be forgotten._

As the wives and maidens took up the general songs of mourning, Mauhúr thought again of his young relatives down there by the bonfire. He remembered the many nights when he had been there as they were now.

After the lineage songs ended, the Urukan made few efforts to keep awake those children who drifted to sleep in their laps or by their sides. Mauhúr thought it likely that his nephews and nieces were asleep by now; except, perhaps, for his eldest niece Isen. She, he thought, might have decided that tonight she was old enough to stay awake.

And he felt certain that his little half-brother would stay awake throughout the night, just as Mauhúr himself had always done.

He remembered the weird, haunted feeling of those funeral nights. Reality had felt more like a dream as he held himself awake, through the knowledge that wakefulness was his duty as the son of a captain of the Fighting Uruk-Hai.

He felt certain that Sergilel Son of Uglúk was even now clutching to his own wakefulness in that same knowledge of his duty.

It lacked, he thought, about three hours until the dawn when a new band of mourners joined their ceremony. The first he knew of their arrival was the quiet shifting noises as Uruk-Hai moved aside to allow the newcomers to pass. Almost in silence they approached from the west, until they halted near the new-built cairn and near Mauhúr Son of Uglúk.

As he had when he heard his mother and Varghúr sing together, and when he heard Sargil sing the lineage of their longfathers, Mauhúr felt surprised and moved. He got to his feet and bowed to the leader of these new mourners. The leader nodded his head in reply.

The Wargs who were their allies seldom joined in the Uruk-Hai ceremonies. For the most part they preferred to keep to themselves, except in training with the warriors who rode them and when they marched forth on campaign. But tonight the magnitude of their allies' loss had brought them out in force, a sight that Mauhúr had never before seen.

He estimated there must be near to thirty of their Warg brethren here. In deference to Uruk-Hai tradition, only the adult male Wargs had joined them here on the ridge. The adult females and the pups—the Wargan and the Wargning—he guessed were below at the bonfire, having gone to join their Uruk sisters even as the males had come to join their brothers.

The leader of the Wargs here on the ridge was not their chieftain, the massive black-coated veteran Shamshir. Tonight leading them instead was Shamshir's son Kumush, grey of coat and slighter of build than his father. Grimly Mauhúr wondered if the Wargs of Tusk Mountain Village had lost their chieftain in the recent battles, even as the people of the Five Villages had lost their captain. But now was not the time for any asking of questions.

The Warg warriors settled down to sit amongst their Uruk comrades. Wargs and Uruk-Hai kept the last hours of vigil together, awaiting the coming of the dawn.

At last it came, heralded by the slow fading of the eastern sky. At last the first sliver of the sun crept over the mountains of the East.

Mauhúr could not stop himself from thinking of another dawn, now four days in the past—the final dawn for which Uglúk Son of Üürekh had been alive.

East and north, north of the place where the sun now rose in its glory, lay the homeland of Uglúk's people. Somewhere there, far beyond the Plains of Rohan, lay Köz Kögildir, holding within its depths waters more blue than any others in Middle Earth. Mauhúr thought with longing of how those waters blazed as the sun rose over the forested hills to reach them; of how the rippled deeps would soon mirror the orange and gold and pearl of the sky.

He thought of his homeland that he had last seen eight years ago, on the final recruiting voyage to the East on which he'd accompanied his father. He thought of his people's home that so many of them would never see again—or that they would never see until after they had died.

The sun climbed above the horizon. Mauhúr wondered if his father was there now, at the lakeshore, watching as the sun's first radiance gleamed upon Köz Kögildir.

In the first instant when all of the disc of the sun could be seen, their Warg allies rose to their feet. Kumush Son of Shamshir flung back his head and howled, and all of his fellows joined him.

Long and haunting, the howls rang forth. As their final echoes faded, the answering howls replied, as the Wargan in the village below answered their brethren's call.

With their allies' howl, the Uruk-Hai also had gotten to their feet. Now Mauhúr bowed again to Kumush, and Kumush nodded again to him. The Warg chieftain's son turned and led his followers through the crowd of Uruk warriors, back toward the west and the village of the Wargs.

A few Wargs paused in their departure, engaging in quiet-voiced conversation with the warriors who rode them in battle. Mauhúr looked from side to side at his own comrades, Lugdush standing at his left and Jaddain at his right. Both of them smiled tiredly at him. Mauhúr could feel himself managing a pallid smile in reply.

The funeral and their vigil were ended. What must matter to them now was what lay ahead.

It was time again to address his troops, but he knew that he had little to say. It was not the time now for speeches; it was the time for sleep.

Mauhúr Son of Uglúk told his warriors, "Go home. Get what rest you can. Tonight, the army of Isengard marches to war."

* * *

Author's Note (Translations and definitions):

 **Dynion Men:** The Men of Dunland. They refer to themselves as Dynion and to their country as Dynion Gwlad. Only one word of their language appears in _The Lord of the Rings_ : _"_ forgoil," which Tolkien translates as "strawheads," a term that both the Dynion Men and the Fighting Uruk-Hai use for the Rohirrim. In his Appendix F, Tolkien tells us, " _Dunland_ and _Dunlending_ are the names that the Rohirrim gave to them, because they were swarthy and dark-haired; thus there is no connexion between the word _dunn_ in these names and the Grey-elven word _Dûn_ 'west.'"

 **Urukan, Urukeen and Urukning** : As noted in a previous chapter, this phrase is equivalent to "women and children." In the language of Uglúk's people, these suffixes are appended to the names of peoples in order to specify "female," "young, unmarried female" and "children."

 **Köz Kögildir** : In the language of Uglúk's people (one of the languages of the region which Western peoples describe as "Rhûn"), köz=eye and kögildir=blue. The Blue Eye is this people's name for the massive lake known in the West as the Sea of Rhûn.

 **Gazar Üür** : A realm in the eastern portion of the region that is known in the West as Rhûn. Gazar=land and üür=dawn.

 **Mirza Baavgai of Khand-Bürenkhii** : In one of the languages of the region known in the West as "Khand," Mirza=lord. Khand-Bürenkhii is a country in north-western Khand, north of the Ash Mountains that form the northern boundary of Mordor. In one of the major languages of Khand, bürenkhii=twilight. Words meaning twilight, sunset or evening are often applied to regions in the west by peoples dwelling further east. The entire landmass west of the River Anduin is known as Gazar-Bürenkhii ("Twilight Land") in the aforementioned Khandian language, and as Sala-Üdese ("Evening Realm") in the language of Mauhúr's people.

 ****** **On the Funeral Verses:** Attentive readers may note that while Mauhúr recalled Uglúk's words about "the metre and the rhyme-scheme that are expected," there is little rhyming in Mauhúr's verses as presented here. It should be remembered that the majority of this work is presented in translation from the languages actually used, including the Common Tongue (Westron), Rohirric, and the language spoken by the Uruk-Hai from the shores of Köz Kögildir. Presumably in their original language, rhyming plays a larger role in the verses' construction.


	4. Chapter 4: In Saruman's Army

_**Chronicles of the Uruk-Hai**_

 _ **Chapter Four:**_ _ **In Saruman's Army**_

 _I saw the enemy go: endless lines of marching Orcs; and troops of them mounted on great wolves. And there were battalions of Men, too. Many of them carried torches, and in the flare I could see their faces. Most of them were ordinary men, rather tall and dark-haired, and grim but not particularly evil-looking. But there were some that were horrible: man-high, but with goblin-faces, sallow, leering, squint-eyed … They took an hour to pass out of the gates … They were all singing with harsh voices, and laughing, making a hideous din. I thought things looked very black for Rohan._

—Meriadoc Brandybuck, "Flotsam and Jetsam," Chapter Nine of _The Two Towers_ by J.R.R. Tolkien

* * *

"Mauhúr. It's time to wake up."

He woke to find his brother-in-law gripping his shoulder. Mauhúr sat up from his bench in the common room of his father's house, disentangling himself from his blanket and bearskin. He must have felt cold as he slept, for he had wrapped himself up in the blanket and fur, about as tightly as a bug in its cocoon.

He asked, "How late is it?"

"You're doing fine," Shúrga assured him. "It's just a little past the noon."

Automatically Mauhúr set about his everyday waking-up routine. He carried the blanket and bearskin outside and hung them on branches of the rowan tree in front of the house, so they could air out before he packed them away in the chest that doubled as his sleeping-bench. As he headed back inside to the cosy dimness of the house, he heard a sound that seemed so normal to him, it hadn't even impinged upon his notice until this moment.

From upstairs in the back of the house came the sound of his mother's chanting. He thought there were several other voices supporting hers. He believed he could faintly hear the rattling of her sistrum underneath everything else, although he could easily have imagined that sound simply because he knew it must be there.

Nodding his head in the direction of the sound, he asked, "How long have they been up there?"

Shúrga answered, "Jaddain said they started just after you fell asleep."

Mauhúr frowned toward the back of the house. "That's longer than she usually spends at it," he muttered.

His brother-in-law raised one eyebrow at him, but kept his voice more-or-less free of emotion. "Are you surprised at that?" he asked quietly. "Today, of all days?"

"No," Mauhúr sighed. "No, I am not surprised."

He knew Ghâshgil must believe she had failed as Uglúk's primary wife, in not having seen a vision of his doom before he set forth on his fatal mission.

Of course he also knew how Uglúk would scoff at that notion. Uglúk would kiss his wife's forehead as though she were just a child—which action, naturally, would infuriate her no end—and he would tell her that no warning vision had the power to change a warrior's deeds.

A warrior, he would say, would always act as he must, visions or no visions. The only thing a vision of doom had power to do was to undermine one's courage and resolve.

But Mauhúr thought he saw clearly the objection his mother would raise. And when he thought of it, he knew he held the same objection.

If Ghâshgil's visions had predicted some of the events of Uglúk's last expedition, he might have changed his actions enough to avert the disaster. The same "if things were different" points he had discussed with Lugdush returned in force to Mauhúr's mind.

At the very least Uglúk might have slain Grishnákh out-of-hand, in the first moment when the agent of Mordor made his appearance among them. With that one deed Uglúk would have saved the time they squandered in debate, and forestalled the fatal disorder sparked by Grishnákh's attempt to abduct the Halflings.

Mauhúr knew one could argue these questions all day and still be no closer to knowing what truly would have happened. But he was certain he knew precisely the conclusion his mother had reached. She believed she had failed her husband by having no vision to warn him. Now she was desperate not to fail her son in the same way.

And her efforts in seeking a vision must not be going well—not if she had laboured in quest of it all the while as he slept, and she was still searching now.

Mauhúr went to the hearth at the centre of the long room, where a cauldron of stew simmered quietly amidst the embers of the fire. He ladled out stew for himself into one of the bowls from the stack beside the hearth, then he asked his brother-in-law, "You having some?"

"I ate already at home," Shúrga began, "but…well, why not?" he continued with a shrug. "Might as well get in as much real food as we can, before we have to live on rations again." As he served himself some stew, Mauhúr's brother-in-law added, "Sometimes on campaign I think I'm liable to turn into one long strip of horse jerky."

Mauhúr grinned at that, but he felt too recently awakened to come up with any witty reply. They sat beside the hearth, and for a brief time Mauhúr focused on nothing except for the stew. It was a standard late-winter stew; carrots and turnips rather on the wizened side after many months in the root cellar, and the occasional chunk of rabbit-meat. The rabbit was lean and stringy from the effects of its own months of winter foraging, but Mauhúr appreciatively gnawed and sucked clean every rabbit bone in his bowl. Shúrga was right. The stew was an exceedingly welcome change from jerky.

When he tossed his bowl into the bucket for washing-up, Mauhúr glanced unwillingly into the shadows at the back of the house. His thoughts journeyed up the three steps into the chamber that had been his father's.

When Mauhúr and Jaddain had returned from the funeral that morning, his mother offered to him that he could sleep there now, if he chose. It was his right, as Uglúk's heir and as the new head of the household.

Mauhúr had vigorously declined that honour. He was not certain he would ever prove able to sleep in there, in the big, nearly chamber-filling bed that had been his father's. No matter how exhausted he might be, in there he would always have the sense that he was an intruder. He would feel he was masquerading as his father, and that the contrasts between them made it painfully clear how ill-fitted he was to ever take Uglúk's place.

Instead he had gone to his own usual bench that he'd used these past two decades and more, its comforting familiarity lulling him into almost instant sleep.

Now his gaze moved again from the entrance to his father's chamber, over to the staircase at its side. The staircase led up to his mother's chamber where she now quested for her vision; and beyond that, upward again to the chamber of his father's secondary wife.

Quietly he sighed as he told himself he must leave the Urukan to their searching. Now as always, the duties ahead of him were far different from theirs.

The hours of that afternoon passed in a peculiar jumble of familiarity and strangeness. Readying the troops for departure on campaign was no new task for him. But never before had their preparations involved so pathetically few. Their diminished numbers meant that Mauhúr had no difficulty sticking to the resolution he'd made back in Fangorn Forest. It was a simple matter to ensure that each of their surviving warriors was equipped with a bow and fully-stocked quiver and at least one spear, in addition to his standard sword and knife.

In Fangorn, Mauhúr had vowed he would never again let his troops face off against the horse-boys without each warrior being so equipped. Now he could all too easily fulfil that vow. They found all they required simply by scrounging in their villages, with no need to requisition so much as one quiver from out of Orthanc's armoury.

Their Warg allies contributed to the armament effort by permitting each Rider to strap multiple spears to the harnesses the Wargs wore at their shoulders, instead of the usual single spear.

No Warg, of course, ever bore any burden so demeaning as a saddle. It would be dire insult to suggest that they should, and death would be the most likely result for anyone who attempted so ill-advised a deed as Warg-saddling. But Mauhúr had been told that the Wargs resented their shoulder harnesses no more than an Uruk warrior would resent his armour or the scabbard at his belt. The harnesses were useful tools for weapons-carrying and they gave the Riders something with which to hang on, apart from clumps of the Wargs' fur.

Before he'd retired to sleep that morning, Mauhúr had learned from his brother-in-law the whereabouts of Shamshir, the Warg chieftain who had been absent from the funeral. The news was relatively good. Shamshir at least was not dead, as Mauhúr had feared. He had sustained serious injury in the battle at the Fords of Isen: a massive sword-cut that had stopped just short of opening his entire abdomen. Shamshir had fought on regardless. At the battle's end his Rider, Captain Bulut, had stitched up the gaping wound after dousing it liberally it with the malham ointment* that could generally be counted on to heal any injury this side of death.

But in this instance, the Warg chieftain's hurt was more than malham and stitchery could cure. On the journey back to Isengard, as Shúrga had told Mauhúr, infection had set in. By the time they reached home, Uruk-Hai and Wargs alike feared for Captain Shamshir's life. The great Warg was now in Orthanc's Houses of Healing, where Saruman's healers laboured to undo the damage his wound's infection had wrought.

Mauhúr prayed that Shamshir would live to go into battle once more. He prayed that Kumush Son of Shamshir would not be bereft of his father as Mauhúr mourned for his. But he ruefully grinned as he thought of what a vile patient the Warg chieftain must be. He had to be fully as challenging to treat as Uglúk himself would have been. Mauhúr reckoned Captain Shamshir was likely slavering with fury, at the knowledge that he was confined to the Houses while his people marched forth to war. The hardest task before the Healers must be convincing the mighty Warg to remain under their care, instead of hurling himself into combat again before their healing had the time to work.

Mauhúr hesitated that afternoon in determining what weaponry to carry on this campaign himself. At length he decided he would take his father's sword and dagger, and would leave his own here at home. The spear he took was the supposed "good luck spear," as Khadan had dubbed it; the Rohirrim spear with which Mauhúr and Khadan had both fought in their battles at the knoll. As they readied their troops for departure, Khadan again offered to return the spear to his commanding officer.

This time Mauhúr accepted the offer with a shrug. He hefted the spear in his hand and said to it, "All right, then, Lucky Spear. Let's see how much luck you've got left in you."

Their orders were to muster with the North Khand Regiment in the courtyard of Orthanc, in time for the army to march forth at sunset. With more than an hour left before the sundown, the remnants of the Five Villages' companies and their Warg allies were ready to depart. As their troops waited at the centre of Great Spring Village, Mauhúr hastened back to his house in the hope that his mother had descended at last from her chamber and would be there to bid him goodbye.

Ghâshgil was indeed entering the common room at the same time as Mauhúr walked inside the house. Behind her followed his younger sister Sargil, and several steps further back came Uglúk's secondary wife with her small son Sergilel.

Ghâshgil and Mauhúr met at the centre of the room, near to the hearth. The look on his mother's face confirmed Mauhúr's thought that her vision-seeking had not gone well. She seemed haunted with pain, and she frowned in frustrated outrage.

Sargil, at her side, looked wan and exhausted. Mauhúr knew it must have been a harsh challenge to withstand, going through the funeral all last night and then spending all this day in Ghâshgil's ceremony of seeing.

"I am sorry, my son," Ghâshgil greeted him bitterly. "I have seen nothing. Through all this day I have sought a vision that might aid you, but none has come to me."

"It's all right, Mother," he tried to reassure her, useless though he knew it to be. "You know what Father would say about visions not turning a warrior's steps from his path."

"I know what your father would say," she returned. "I also know that your father is dead."

"Mother, you said you did see something," Sargil ventured. "You talked of seeing … of seeing a great moving shadow."

"Yes," was Ghâshgil's impatient, angry reply, "and what use can that be to anyone? I thought I saw a dark cloud, racing along the ground; a fog moving faster than any fog should move. It seemed a great, shadowy wall. As it moved I heard a rushing wind, filled with rustling, creaking whispers. Do you see some way in which _that_ vision can aid your brother? For I can see no such way."

Sargil looked helplessly at Mauhúr. He suggested, "If it seemed a shadow, then perhaps the vision is a favourable one for our cause. Is not the Dark Lord said to be the master of shadows?"

Ghâshgil only sighed grimly. Meanwhile, Mauhúr had been noticing a scene taking place behind his mother and sister. Uglúk's secondary wife Varghúr was kneeling down speaking urgently to her son, in tones too quiet for Mauhúr to hear. He felt certain that the little boy replied to what Varghúr said to him, although of course he did not do so in spoken words.

Abruptly Sergilel turned from his mother and ran toward Mauhúr. Varghúr reached out to grab the boy, but was too late. She scrambled up and followed as her son slammed into Mauhúr, hugging him fiercely.

"Sergilel, what are you doing?" Varghúr demanded. Tension was harsh in her voice. "I told you not to interrupt your brother and his lady mother."

"No, it's all right," Mauhúr said. He lifted Sergilel up and gazed into his little brother's face.

Mauhúr suddenly thought, _He looks terrified._

"What is it, little one?" Mauhúr asked him. "What's wrong?"

Sergilel's voice drove desperately into his mind. _Beware of the trees that walk! Beware of them! They'll kill you! They're going to kill you all!_

He knew he should not be amused at confronting his brother's obvious fear. But the warning seemed so absurd, he could not hold back a smile. "All right, little one," he answered, as he banished the smile. "If I should see any trees that walk, I will be certain to beware of them."

 _Don't laugh!_ the little boy protested. _You don't understand! They'll kill every one of you! They'll kill every one!_

Varghúr told Mauhúr scowlingly, "This fear came to him during the ceremony of seeing. It was perhaps two hours ago when I heard him screaming in my mind; saying he had to warn you that the walking trees would kill you."

 _They will!_ the frantic thought message wailed at him. _Mauhúr, they're going to kill you!_

Sternly Mauhúr told himself, _Absurd though this seems, you must take it seriously, for Sergilel's sake._

"Very well, my brother," said Mauhúr Son of Uglúk, meeting Sergilel's gaze. "I promise you. If I encounter the trees that walk, I will do all I can to shield our warriors from them. I will be on my guard to save myself and our companies, I swear it to you."

Sergilel gulped and nodded. Mauhúr thought he could feel how very close the boy was to crying.

With an eager note in her voice, their sister Sargil suggested, "Mother, what if these 'trees that walk' are the same great shadow you saw? Walking trees might make a 'rustling, creaking' noise. There must be meaning in it, if you and Sergilel saw the same vision."

Tight-lipped with anger, Ghâshgil Daughter of Karangil answered, "There may be meaning in it, but I see it not. And your brother must leave us before we have the time to quest for the answer. The army of Isengard cannot wait on the uncertain solution to a riddle."

Mauhúr promised again as he set down his little brother, "I will take every care, Sergilel." Smiling at his mother, his sister and his father's secondary wife, he added, "To the rest of you I promise I will take every care that I can, while yet serving with honour."

"I know you will serve with honour," Ghâshgil told him. "You will serve with honour as did your father."

He hugged his mother and his sister and then bowed to Varghúr, who bowed her head to him in return. The time had come for him to depart.

As he walked from his home, he once more heard his brother's voice in his mind.

 _Beware of them, Mauhúr. Remember._

* * *

Their orders were to report to Captain Kharga of the North Khand regiment—an order simpler to issue than to obey. Their obedience entailed that they first manage to locate Captain Kharga of the North Khand regiment.

It was well that Orthanc's courtyard was vast. Huge as it was, the courtyard seemed none too large for the hordes now milling within it.

Mauhúr thought back to General Wulfgar's statement that an army of ten thousands would march from Isengard. Now he realised he had never seen a muster of ten thousand warriors, and he had no real notion of what ten thousands together would look like.

He worked to calculate it as they pushed their way through the crowds, striving to busy his mind with estimates of how much space a force of one hundred would take up, and then multiplying that by a hundredfold. His estimates did not get him much of anywhere. He thought, _I'd need to be a bird flying over Isengard to see if there's anything like ten thousands mustered yet or not._

His attempt to fill his mind with calculations failed to distract him from how weak and vulnerable he felt as their depleted troop strode through the assembled army.

Mauhúr told himself his feelings were foolish. They still numbered near seventy Fighting Uruk-Hai and forty of their Warg allies. No one would deny they were still a force to be reckoned with. Yet he felt desperately exposed as he compared their present numbers with the power they would have been but for their recent disaster.

He felt as though everyone around them knew of their shame; as though the tale of their defeat were plain to read upon their faces. He imagined every glance cast in their direction carried its owner's disdain that the Companies of the Five Villages had been half wiped out in one single night's-worth of battle.

 _Sha, Mauhúr lad,_ he told himself, _why don't you just put a cork in it? Your father always did say you think too damned much._

Through the courtyard of Orthanc they pushed their way past troop after troop of warriors who were _not_ the regiment they sought. Each banner they glimpsed bore the insignia of the wrong regiment: the silhouetted mountain range for the Uruk-Hai of the Mountains of Mist; the turret and mountain's peak for the forces of Gundabad; the outline of Köz Kögildir with a fir tree silhouetted beneath it, the banner of their fellow regiment of the East. With the members of that regiment they exchanged greetings and words of condolence as the Five Villages' warriors strode past.

There were also the many troops of Dynion* Men, whose banners Mauhúr did not recognize at all. The most of them had animal motifs as their insignia: a bull's head design, the silhouette of a bear, a dragon, and a bird with outstretched wings that was probably meant to be a raven. The only different sort of design he glimpsed amongst the banners of the Men was one marked by a circle with a crescent atop it, that he guessed was meant to depict an eclipse of the sun.

The troop of the Five Villages criss-crossed its way about the courtyard, now and then stepping over the chain fences and cutting across the paths that led inward to the tower of Orthanc like spokes in a vast wheel. They detoured around the pillars lining the paths, and around the stone domes shielding the entrances to the underground city that spread out underneath Isengard. There beneath them dwelt thousands of the Cave Uruk-Hai in Saruman's forces, and there they laboured in constructing the White Hand's engines of war.

Jaddain, at Mauhúr's left, finally spotted the regiment they were seeking. They had just made their way around one of the entrance domes which up until then had blocked the Khandian banner from their sight. "Over there," Jaddain exclaimed, pointing. "That's their banner, isn't it?"

To Mauhúr's right, Lugdush grumbled, "It's about time. I was starting to think we would have to walk to North Khand to find them."

True to the duality of lifestyles that characterized the Uruk-Hai of Northern Khand, their banner showed the silhouetted profiles of two greatly contrasted beings: one of them a mighty war horse; the other a Warg.

Mauhúr glanced about hastily for any nearby unit of North Khandian horse cavalry. Most horses of his experience, unlike their counterpart on the banner, did not co-exist peaceably with Wargs. But casting his gaze far ahead, he saw that presumably all of Isengard's horse cavalry was gathered near the front gate. He guessed the horse-troops would make up the vanguard of their forces when Saruman's army issued forth.

They found Captain Kharga standing near his regiment's banner. Mauhúr had a nodding acquaintance with this captain, having attended several meetings that included Uglúk, Kharga, and the captains of the other regiments. Kharga's appearance was typical of the majority of Khand-Uruk-Hai. His skin was a brown-gold similar to the complexions of both Mauhúr's mother and Jaddain, and he had the broad, high-cheekboned face so frequently seen in Khand. As was also typical of many a Khand-Uruk, Mannish ancestry seemed more recent in his bloodlines than in those of the Uruk-Hai of many other nations. The black fringe of beard tracing the line of his jaw gave testimony to his recent Mannish heritage.

Kharga told Lugdush and Mauhúr, "I grieve for the losses you have suffered." When Lugdush inquired if the Khandian captain had orders to give them, his initial response was a shrug.

"You can post yourselves on our right flank," Captain Kharga decided, "there next to those Dynion-Hai. Some of our boys have been getting into squabbles with them for hours now. It'll be nice to have your lads provide padding between us and them."

Lugdush snorted, "So our boys can get into squabbles with them, instead of yours?"

"Well," replied Kharga, with another shrug, "it'll give you something to do while you're waiting."

Waiting was indeed what they did, for the next many hours. They squeezed themselves into place where they had been directed. The most of them sat down, near their own banner with its deep blue depiction of Köz Kögildir seen from a raven's-eye view. Mauhúr saw to it that the Wargs and their Riders were positioned at the edge of their troop next to the North Khand regiment, rather than beside their Mannish allies. He thought it a reasonable guess that their brethren of Khand were more used to Wargs in their midst than were the Men of Dynion.

Mauhúr endeavoured not to stare openly at the Dynion-Hai. While he reckoned it no great disaster if their troops engaged in a bit of in-fighting, he thought it politically preferable that any squabble should not be sparked off by an Uruk commander staring. But all the same, he was curious about the Dynion Men. He supposed the Men were likely just as curious about this new band of Uruk-Hai posted at their side.

He realized he'd had, up until now, remarkably little contact with the Men of Dynion, despite the fact of their country being located just on the other side of the mountains. He'd had far more interactions with Men of the East and of Khand. He and his father had stayed overnight as the guests of Mannish chieftains and warleaders on several occasions during Uglúk's recruiting trips east of the Great River. But the Dynion Men, near neighbours though they were, were almost entirely unknown to him.

Glancing at them now from time to time, he thought they seemed greatly more akin to his own folk than did the horse-boys of Rohan. The appearance of these Men was not marred by the Rohirrim's maggot-pale skin, their unnatural fair hair or their girlish looks. These Dynion Men, for the most part, had brown skin and hair of brown or black. Only in their beards—some of which achieved truly prodigious size—did they seem notably alien to his people. Their clothing, armour and armaments seemed little different from those of the Fighting Uruk-Hai—particularly since, like those of their Uruk allies, their shields and helmets were painted with the emblem of the White Hand.

The army had been due to march forth at sunset, for the sake of those Uruk-Hai less suited than their fellows to enduring the light of day. Sunset came and went, with no sign of their forces being anywhere near on the move.

The dusky evening settled in and spear-tall torches were kindled into life all about the courtyard. Mauhúr thought the number of torches was ridiculous. They provided more light by far than any Uruk would need. He guessed it was what one had to put up with when fighting alongside Men: the glare of thousands of torches for the sake of their crippled-by-nighttime eyesight.

Watching the lighting of the torches soon lost its interest for the spectators. Othorod, who was sitting next to their banner, gave a big, ostentatious yawn, stretched out his arms high above his head and said loudly, "Isn't that just always the way of it. Hurry up and wait."

A young Dynion Man was standing nearby, alternately kicking the pillar next to him and doing a little shuffling dance of boredom. Mauhúr thought the Man was likely very young indeed. If he had been of their own people, he might scarcely have been old enough to join the Uruki company. The lack of beard upon his face, Mauhúr speculated, was probably due to extreme youth rather than to a shaving regimen or to any Uruk-Hai or Elven ancestry.

This young Man now asked Othorod, "What do you reckon we are waiting _for_?" As well as Mauhúr could judge, the young fellow meant it as a serious question, not as some kind of a jibe.

The old Uruk cocked an eyebrow at the youth, grinned, and said without any particular malice, "Maybe for some more of your folk to wander in over the hills."

An older Man nearby, with his grey beard plaited into two long braids, shook his head and said emphatically, "That's one thing we're _not_ waiting for. The most of us have been sitting here since the noon. We've been sat here so long I'm about to start scraping moss off my arse."

Another Man next to him put in, "Well, then, Gwydion, you should have kept your arse in fighting trim with a visit to the pleasure pit this afternoon. The lovely ladies there would be glad to scrape the moss off for you." This Man had massive shoulders and a barrel-shaped chest, and he seemed to take great pride in his face: he concealed it only with a dagger-sharp moustache and a small dollop of beard at the tip of his chin.

The old Man Gwydion chortled, "Considering what those lovely ladies might give me, I'll just be dealing with the moss on my own, thank you."

"Nay," exclaimed the one who had mentioned the pleasure pit, "speak not ill of what you do not know! The White Hand keeps his whores scrupulously clean. He has no wish to be burdened with a pox-ridden army."

"He has no wish to be burdened with the pox himself, either," added another Dynion Man. "He'll not want to pick up a dose of clap when he makes a little brother for our noble General Wulfgar."

An outburst of laughter followed, largely from the Men. There were some laughs from the Uruk-Hai, but Mauhúr believed they sounded uncomfortable and strained. His own face felt hot with embarrassment, and he heartily wished the discussion would follow another road.

For his part, he had never set foot within Saruman's fabled brothel in the west wall of Isengard. He had valued his father's good opinion too highly to so demean himself. It had been Uglúk's vigorously stated maxim that one should never spill one's seed where it might take root in unworthy ground.

Mauhúr believed that few of his fellow Uruki had visited the Isengard pleasure pit. Some had been known to drop ostentatious hints in claiming to have been there, but the lack of detail in their reports suggested to him that their tales were the stuff of fantasy. Anyhow, he thought, it was likely that any of his fellows who _had_ patronized the pit would diligently conceal that fact, rather than boast of it. Discreet silence was preferable to the resentment of comrades who felt their youthful urges just as keenly, but had not succumbed to temptation.

Othorod made an effort to turn the conversation by casting another jibe at the Dynion Men. He said, "Ah, so _that's_ why we're all waiting around. Because the most of your folk are still chasing tail at the pleasure pit."

The admirer of the pleasure pit seemed in high good humour that evening—possibly because he had just paid the brothel a visit. That Man now declared, "Ah, there, if you will pardon me, friend Uruk, I would say you also speak of what you do not know. When I was at the pit earlier today"—he paused briefly for his comrades' upsurge of guffaws and coarse remarks—"I saw fully as many Uruk-Hai as Men frequenting the place. And if you are not familiar with the pit, I can whole-heartedly recommend it. Even if your tastes are conservative, you'll find something to suit you. The Uruk ladies I've had the pleasure of visiting there have all been worth far more than the price of admission."

There followed many a low-voiced growl from the Uruk-Hai. Mauhúr judged that it was decidedly time he sent the conversation elsewhere.

Circumstances aided him. Just as he was casting about for some other topic of discussion, a big waggon creakingly emerged from the nearest domed entryway to the underground city. The cart was several Uruk's-heights in length and was pulled and pushed by six of the Cave Uruk-Hai. On it were a dozen or so black ladders, probably metal from the way they glinted in the torchlight. Glancing further afield, Mauhúr caught glimpses of waggons appearing out of other domes.

"Looks like that was what we were waiting on, lads," he said, jerking his thumb toward the nearest waggon. "For siege equipment. Not for anybody to go chasing tail, after all."

For a time, jibing conversations were set aside in favour of simply watching the progress of the carts. That first waggon with the ladders was heading straight for them, the Cave Uruk-Hai ordering, "Out of the way"—with occasional interjections like "You could give us a hand, you know"—to the watching Dynion Men. Their route took them over the pillar-and-chain-fence-lined pathway that the Dynion-Hai and Mauhúr's fellows were lounging across. The Cave Uruk hauling on the front of the cart announced, "Coming through," and then added, "someone take those chains down, will you?"

Two of the Men unhooked the chain from its pillars on their side of the path while Mauhúr and Jaddain did the same for the chain on theirs. Fortunately, the distance between two pillars was broad enough for the cart to pass between. As the wagon of ladders crossed the path, the Uruk at the front asked, "You the North Khand regiment?"

"They are," Mauhúr answered, nodding toward Kharga's troops. "We're seconded to them."

The Cave Uruk smirked up at Mauhúr in a way that naturally made Mauhúr believe he knew the full sorry tale of their regiment's depletion. The knowledge that this was probably only Mauhúr's imagination did not prove to be of much help. "Well, we'll leave this with you lot, then," the cart-hauling Uruk decided, "and we'll bring along another batch for them. Don't fight over the ladders, boys; there'll be plenty to go around."

The six Cave Uruk-Hai manoeuvred the wagon off the path into the midst of Mauhúr's lads and then headed back the way they had come.

They had not long to wait before the next interesting arrival. A different batch of Cave Uruk-Hai—eight of them, this time, all swearing and sweating profusely—hauled up another long waggon and left it with the Dynion Men. This wagon bore on it only one item, which the Men greeted with enthusiasm: a battering ram formed from the trunk of a mighty tree.

"Congratulations to us, boys," exclaimed the proponent of the pleasure pit, "looks like we're the favoured ones. We get the honour of carrying Saruman's cock into war for him!"

Into the general clamour of laughter that followed, old Gwydion of the grey braids put in, "Or one of his cocks; a great leader like him should have many. They'll be scattered all throughout the army."

Another Man observed, "Now, that's an advantage to being a Wizard I never thought of before. Having more than one cock!"

"Too bad they didn't bring this out to us earlier," added another, "we could have spent all afternoon painting it. We would have had it fully realistic-looking by now."

Jaddain inserted himself into the Men's conversation with, "You've probably still got time now. Did you bring your paints along with you?"

"But," the discussion continued, "what does a Wizard's cock actually look like? Does anyone know? And if anyone _does_ know," the Man who had posed that question went on, "I don't want to hear how he came to learn about it!"

The very young Man who had first asked Othorod what he thought they were waiting for suggested, "We could ask the girls in the pleasure pit." It must have taken a lot for him to nerve himself up to say that. The torchlight showed with merciless clarity the deep flush of embarrassment on his face.

Mauhúr rather wished the kid had _not_ got up his nerve to make the comment. He hoped he would not need to once again steer the conversation away from the brothel. But instead, after some appreciative chortles had answered the young Man's effort, Jaddain and several of the Men kept things merrily bubbling along with increasingly wild speculations on the appearance of Wizards' cocks.

By the time that discussion began taxing Jaddain and the Men's imaginations, a further distraction arrived. Eight more Cave Uruk-Hai came hauling another waggon along the path between the rows of pillars and chains, toward the fortress' front gate. But these were outfitted differently from their fellows who had brought the other waggons. Those others had worn only work clothes, while these wore helmets and chainmail, had swords at their belts and bows and quivers at their backs.

The load in their waggon was different as well. It consisted solely of barrels of about three feet in height. On each barrel was blazoned in red paint, written both in Westron and in the runes of Mordor, "Danger" and "Keep Away From Fire."

"What's that you've got there, lads?" Lugdush called out as the curiously-laden waggon trundled past.

"Nothing for you to meddle with," one Cave Uruk snapped back sourly.

Another, however, was more communicative. He called back as they trudged on, "The White Hand's secret weapon. Or one of 'em. This'll make the Rohan horse-pricks soil their breeches before another night is out."

There was little speech at first as the waggon with its mysterious contents left them behind. Then the same very youthful Man who had first started their conversations began to muse, deep in thought, "Maybe whatever that is, it's what they were making down there today." He gestured to the ground. "We kept hearing … booms and hissing and whooshes." He added to Othorod, who was standing beside him, "I thought perhaps the White Hand was making more of you to add to his army."

 _That_ took the conversation to a new level of interest and possible danger. Nearly every Uruk and Man within earshot turned to watch how Othorod would respond to this particular comment. Not a few of the young Man's comrades stepped farther away from him, to literally as well as figuratively distance themselves from his remarks.

The veteran Uruk warrior took a long, hard look at the Dynion youth. Then he began, in a slow drawl, "Now, I hope you'll excuse me if I'm not hearing you right. Maybe there's still some dried blood caked in my ears. That last Man I killed did gush a lot of it onto me. Maybe I didn't get it all cleaned out yet. You _did_ say you thought maybe Saruman was making more of us? As in, making more Uruk-Hai?"

The young Man glanced around in fright, only to discover that all his comrades had deserted him. To his credit, he managed to face Othorod again and to meet the old warrior's gaze. "Well," the boy told him, "yes."

Othorod picked at the imaginary dried blood in his ear. "Making us how, exactly?"

"Well … I don't know," the youth answered helplessly. "That's what people say the White Wizard does down there. They say he's got a kind of a … factory down there, where he makes your people using some kind of spells. They say that's how it is he's got so many of you in his army."

"Unh-hunh," said Othorod, with a seemingly contemplative nod. "I see. So, tell me, then, son. Does the White Wizard churn your folk out of a factory, too?"

"Well … no!" Watching along with the rest, Mauhúr thought it likely that the young fellow had only just stopped himself from adding, "of course not."

"Then how is it he's got so many of you in his army?"

"Well … that is … he … Our chieftains and captains agreed to fight for him. They negotiated; he offered us good pay, and land …"

Suddenly another Man strode up to stand beside the youth, clamping a hand on his shoulder. This Man wore his beard in one dark brown braid and had a clear air of command about him. "That's enough, Gryffyd," the officer said firmly. "You don't need to go into details."

Othorod gave a jaunty little bow to the newcomer. Then he said to young Gryffyd, "Well, there you go, then. If he can negotiate with Dynion Men to fight for him, he can negotiate with Uruk-Hai to fight for him, too. Though I've got to admit," Othorod went on, scratching his cheek and grinning, "I kind of like the idea that you thought we're created with a boom, a hiss and a whoosh!"

Gryffyd cast Othorod a queasy-looking smile and said to him, "I'm sorry."

"No hard feelings, son," said Othorod.

That should have been the end of it. But just then young Uli had to go and put in his oar. Mauhúr guessed that made sense, when he thought about it. This youngest of the Five Villages' warriors was probably about the same age as Gryffyd of the Dynion Men. It wasn't much of a surprise that the one would try to show off before the other, and attempt to prove how much more experience and wisdom he had than his Dynion counterpart.

"You know, Gryffyd," Uli remarked, "I think your little-bearded friend over there should take you on a tour of the pleasure pit. Seems like you could use some grounding on certain of the facts of life."

"I beg your pardon?" young Gryffyd snapped.

"Well, you see," answered Uli, trying hard to emulate Othorod's mocking drawl, "when a daddy Uruk and a mummy Uruk love each other very much, they come together, and if the stars align and the Valar are kind to them, sometimes they're able to make a squalling, wailing, pissing, shitting, cuddly little baby Uruk. Now, I don't know for sure, but I'm betting it works the same sort of way for men and women. I think you should take a trip to the pleasure pit to learn more about the basics."

Gryffyd fired back, "I think _you_ ought to learn if it's possible for you to fuck yourself!"

Mauhúr and the braid-bearded officer stepped in at the same moment. Mauhúr ordered, "Drop it, Uli," and Braided-beard said loudly, "Let's save further chatting on the facts of life 'till we're all camped out in the Hornburg getting drunk on the Forgoil's* wine."

The Mannish officer glanced at the cart in their midst with its impressive battering ram, and seized onto that as a useful distraction. "I think you boys were right," he went on, "I think we ought to paint this thing. Gwydion, go see if you can requisition some paint anywhere around this place."

Old Gwydion bowed, and Othorod volunteered, "I'll go along with you. That way we'll have more bargaining power to use on whomever is Isengard's Keeper of the Paint, be he Man or Uruk."

The paint-hunting expedition didn't take long. Othorod and Gwydion soon returned with a bucket of red paint, a bucket of white, and two paintbrushes. Mauhúr stayed out of the subsequent painting project, but he found it entertaining to watch.

At first the painting was the work of Dynion Men only, with various Uruk-Hai offering critical/helpful suggestions. The paint job eventually made it more explicit that they thought of the battering ram as Saruman's cock, although this work of art was never going to be a marvel of realism. To address that issue, the Dynion-Hai wrote "Saruman's Cock" in big white letters on one side of the ram and "Horseboy-Fucker" in red on the other. The Mannish artists then decided that more was merrier and invited their Uruk counterparts to join them. Men and Uruk-Hai laboured together, adorning the ram with such decorations as a cock-and-balls with wings and sketches that presumably depicted deadly or humiliating fates being inflicted on the Rohirrim.

By the middle night the Dynion-Hai and the warriors of the Five Villages were on reasonably friendly terms, brought together by their shared artistic endeavour. Mauhúr believed it was, indeed, the midnight and past, when at long last trumpet calls rang forth from the gate of Isengard.

Lugdush sprang to his feet. "Finally!" he exclaimed. He added to Mauhúr, "If we'd stuck around here much longer, I think this lot would have decided we need to paint the entire fortress."

All around the courtyard Mauhúr saw Men picking up the torches nearest to them. At that sight, he suppressed a sigh.

He asked himself, _Can it really be worth all the bother we have to go through, to fight by the side of Men? We can kiss goodbye to any advantage of surprise, as we march with thousands of torches that will be spotted from leagues away._

 _Of course,_ his thoughts added, _we weren't ever going to surprise anyone anyhow; not with a force this big. Our strategy—if you can call it that—must be nothing more than just to roll over the enemy and crush them by sheer weight._

Even with the army finally on the move, they could only creep forward at the most maddening pace. In Mauhúr's thoughts, their army's progress toward the gate was like a thick ointment pouring from a jar with only the smallest of necks.

He thought, _We should be grateful we're near the centre of the courtyard, not over by the north end. We've only got to wait for about half the army to get out of here, before we do._

Regiment after regiment, as they drew near to Isengard's gate, burst into song. At first they were too far away for Mauhúr to hear the words, but he recognized many of the tunes. They were the familiar songs of battle and of the march that he had heard since his childhood. The tunes that he did not recognize, he guessed, were likely war songs of the Men of Dynion.

Finally the warriors in their section of the courtyard set forth, although at barely above a shuffle. The North Khand regiment headed out first, followed by the Warriors of the Five Villages with their Mannish neighbours at their side. The banner of this regiment of Men, their comrades in the painting of "Saruman's Cock," was a boar's head in red upon a background of black.

At last they neared the gate. A gleam of white drew Mauhúr's gaze upward and to their left.

There in the wall of Isengard, outlined by one of the arched windows of a chamber overlooking the gate, stood Saruman of the White Hand. The Wizard's pale form seemed somehow to cast more light on the scene beneath him than did the thousandfold torches of the Men.

Saruman was too high above them for Mauhúr to suppose that he could read the expression upon the Wizard's face. Yet he thought he knew what that expression must be: cold, uncaring for his soldiers who marched to war beneath him, but perhaps with his eyes aglow in excitement at thoughts of the victory that would soon be his.

Ahead of them, the North Khand warriors began to sing. Once again, Mauhúr recognized the tune; it was the song he knew as "Marching to Victory." Someone among the North Khand regiment had composed new words to the song, but they were simple enough to learn—especially as the Khandians sang them over and over again. Before long, the Uruk-Hai of the Five Villages joined in the song.

 _Straw-haired horsebo_ _ys, prating Elf-lords_

 _Preening Tarks in cities tall_

 _Here's the day you long have dreaded_

 _Now's the hour of your fall._

 _Long you dreamed that you could rule us_

 _Long you thought this world your own_

 _We will topple down your glory_

 _We will hurl you from your throne._

 _Uruk-Hai! Fight on to victory_

 _Like the fire that all devours_

 _Fight with arrows, swords and courage_

 _Fight and win! This world is ours._

Their Dynion neighbours were marching just to Mauhúr's right. Soon he heard that the Men, too, were singing along. They had but one word to change, singing "Dynion" in the place of "Uruk-Hai."

Through the long tunnel-way of Isengard's gate they marched. Then at last they were out; out of the fortress and upon the road to war. Following those ahead of them they moved off south and west. Their force spread over and to either side of the road that led to the Fords of Isen.

The singing dwindled and ceased as they left Isengard and the White Wizard behind. In the place of their war songs came casual talk and the many sounds of an army on the move. But this army moved at so painfully slow a speed, Mauhúr felt their march was nigh as maddening as the wait that had come before it. Ill-temperedly he thought that their pace would have done disgrace to a herd of fat, aged sheep. A force of Uruk-Hai would have run for most of the way, with occasional rest-breaks of briefly slowing to a jog, but the presence of Men among them held their pace to a leaden plod.

It seemed that many of the North Khand warriors resented this dallying as keenly as he did. But clearly there were orders from above that the main body of the army must advance at the same pace. Once, ahead of them, Mauhúr heard Captain Kharga of the North Khand regiment berating his troops, "No running, curse you! You hear me? We've got Men among us now, so we'll hold our pace to theirs. We're to descend on the foe as one _army_ , not as dribs and drabs straggling in over a stretch of ten leagues. If it drives you mad, so much the better. Save your madness for the Whiteskins, and let it loose when it will give you the fury to rend our enemies apart!"

That seemed relatively good advice, but again Mauhúr asked himself if alliance with Men was truly worth this trouble. He wondered why, at the least, their army could not launch its assault on Rohan in two waves: with Uruk-Hai as an initial strike-force, and their allies arriving to help mop up the enemy when the Men finally managed to catch up.

Of course as the commander of their diminished regiment, it was not for him to utter such complaints about their allies. But those same complaints he heard voiced by his fellows frequently enough.

"I don't understand what good Men are," Kharorod muttered once, as the hours of the night dragged on in sympathy with the crippled pace of their march. "Why did Ilúvatar bother with creating them? You'd think that having shorter lifespans than every other people, they'd do things _faster_ , to squeeze more living into their shorter time on Middle Earth."

Jaddain grunted in agreement. "Remind me why we're supposed to take pride in the Mannish part of our heritage. What gift is it, again, that the Men bring to our bloodlines, in forming the glorious culmination of creation that is the Fighting Uruk-Hai?"

Mauhúr sighed. Jaddain, and the rest of them, too, knew the answer to that as well as he did. They had all heard the Song of the Origins in every funeral they attended, and in half the other ceremonies of their people. They knew all the attributes ascribed to every people who were reckoned among the Longfathers of the Uruk-Hai.

"Their courage," Mauhúr said flatly. "Their courage and ingenuity in finding ways to endure the burdens placed upon them. They are the weakest of the peoples, and so bravery and cunning is theirs, that they may find means of rising above their weakness. And," he added with a grimace, "Men's ears may be round, but they can still hear through them. Do me a favour and try not to talk too insultingly of our allies. Save that sort of talk for the straw-heads."

Boran, another of Mauhúr's troop, joined in with a more practical topic of conversation. "Tell me about this 'Hornburg' we're supposedly marching to. That's Korgan Gorn,* isn't it?" he continued, translating the name into their own tongue.

"That's the one," answered Lugdush. "The horn fortress. It's the horse-boys' most defensible stronghold; or one of their two most defensible, anyway. We've really got 'em on the run if they're taking refuge in there. The horse-rats are scuttling to their holes, and it's going to be up to us to dig 'em out again."

"Korgan Gorn," Boran mused. "Why do they call it that? Is the fortress shaped like a horn? Or maybe there's a horn-shaped mountain near it?"

"Could be," Lugdush grunted, "but that's not the story I've heard. I heard it's because of this horse-boy captain or king who fought some battles at the place. Helm Hammerhand, they called him. He had this big magical horn, or something along those lines, and they say you can still hear the blowing of his horn in the hills behind the fort."

"Helm the Butcher," sounded an angry voice over to their right. Looking toward the speaker, they saw he was the braid-bearded officer of the Dynion Men. This Man went on, "Helm who traitorously slew King Freca in the midst of a treaty-meeting, and so set into motion the next two centuries of war between our people and his. And among our folk," the officer continued, "'tis said that those sounds in the hills are not Helm's horn, but rather the laments of our people of ancient times, who built that fortress labouring as slaves for the Men of the Sea when first they swept down upon us to steal our land. Oh, yes," exclaimed this leader of the Dynion-Hai, with hatred ringing in his tone, "we have ample reason to remember Eorl the Brigand and Helm the Butcher, and all their many other captains and kings who wrote their names into history with the blood of our people! And today," he concluded more quietly, almost as though speaking to himself, "we will be glad to shove the Horn of Helm up the backsides of his descendants."

"And we will be glad to help you," Lugdush answered him.

The road they followed was known to the warriors of the Five Villages from many previous journeys. But tonight Mauhúr thought the familiar surroundings seemed almost unknown. It felt hard to recognize anything when the shadowy landscape passed by at so slow a pace, and when they were surrounded by the marching forms of so many others.

Only one thing seemed the same as on former journeys: the River Isen. It still raced down its rocky bed, the sound of it unaltered by the army's ponderous passage. He thought if its sound had changed at all, it was that the river sang along its path with more gaiety than ever, rejoicing in the recent rains and snowmelt that had swollen its flow.

The river was hidden from him by many ranks of their forces, over on the army's right flank. But he was glad he could still hear Isen's merry song beneath the tramp and creak and the occasional songs of Saruman's advancing army.

In the last hour or so of darkness, Mauhúr began to think he heard occasional sounds in the distance ahead of them: the sounds of battle. He knew he might easily be imagining those sounds. They could have sprung from his own thoughts, he so longed to come to grips with the foe; to fight instead of simply to march.

Dawn grew on them at last, despite Mauhúr's gloomy fantasy that the hours were not even passing. He thought the day itself seemed to take on attributes suited to their army's sluggish pace. The morning brought no clouds, but the air felt heavy; as heavy as the footfalls of their troops. The unseasonable heat that had lain on the land for weeks seemed stronger than ever. There was a haze about the sun as it rose at their backs.

He had sought to note, as they passed it, the place where seven days before the Uruki troop had left the spear-mounted head of the Man on whose carcase they feasted, after their battle at the Fords. In that effort he failed. They might have walked within yards of the head on its spear and not have seen it through the press of marching bodies around them. And, he knew, the head might no longer be there.

Perhaps a raiding party of the Man's own people might have ventured into Saruman's territory and recovered their comrade's head. He thought it not likely that scavengers had completely made off with it. Birds might well have perched upon it to sample the skin and the eyes, but he judged that the head would provide too little foodstuffs for them to go to the trouble of wrenching it off the spear. The same considerations held for other, earth-bound scavengers. With a recent battlefield so nigh, they must have more rewarding sources of food. They would scarcely bother with one head upon a spear.

He knew some one of the army of Isengard might have hurled down the head as they passed it, in sign of derision against their enemy. He hoped that was not the case. Mauhúr would have liked to believe that few Uruk-Hai would dishonour themselves by striking down their foeman's head, but he supposed that belief might be largely wishful thinking. In a gathering of ten thousands, naturally not all of them could be relied upon to behave as they should. And it might have been some Man of Dynion who had cast the head down, knowing nothing of the tradition which honoured both the Rider and his conqueror with that display.

An hour or more after dawn had reached them, they began to see traces of combat.

Once again they were nearing the Fords of Isen. Mauhúr took care not to glance toward Kharorod, marching close by him as they approached the Fords. He judged that Kharorod might have difficulty controlling his expression as they passed the spot where he had been dealt the chest wound that still troubled him. If that should prove true, Mauhúr would not have him feel any shame from the knowledge that his commanding officer had witnessed his lack of control.

Despite the thick press of their army all about them, much of the recent course of battle lay obvious to see. All of their troops skirted around one location just north of the river, maintaining clear about it a wide enough space that Mauhúr could see without difficulty what lay there.

The bodies of Uruk-Hai and Men of Dynion, perhaps thirty or forty all told, were laid out upon the shore. They had been stacked up slightly, that the corpses might not take too much room from out of the army's path. Yet it was clear they had been treated with care by their comrades, not flung into a heap as the enemy would have done to them.

About the bodies was planted a perimeter wall of spears. In his brief glances as they passed, Mauhúr thought he could see the bodies of at least two Wargs lying also within the spear wall, and the bodies of several horses.

Outside of the spears, gazing south along the army's road, two great Wargs sat on guard. The fur of one was black, and of the other, a brown of a hue that was almost red. Mauhúr guessed that just as with the Wargs who were his own people's allies, the regiment with which these two served brought additional Wargs with them to battle besides those who bore Riders on their backs. They would stand ready to fill the places of their comrades who were slain, and they could also fulfil duties such as these two did now. These had stayed behind to guard the fallen against the ravages of scavengers, until other comrades among Isengard's army could take the time to bury their slain.

Clearly the forces of Saruman had triumphed in this fight. The Rohirrim slain were granted no honour like that which was given their fallen enemies. The horse-boys' bodies, and those of their horses, lay thick on the slope running down to the river, on the island at the centre of the stream, and as thick or thicker on the opposite bank rising upward on the southern shore. On both shores they sprawled upon the shingle. Their corpses bobbed in the river's current, caught against rocks and snags, both up- and down-stream of the Fords.

Mauhúr, Lugdush and Jaddain joined their fellows who laboured in manoeuvring the waggon of siege ladders down the river bank, a process which unsurprisingly involved a fair amount of swearing. Hauling the waggon across the river proved relatively trouble-free, for the Rohirrim kept the stream at the Fords of Isen clear of all obstructions. Mauhúr grinned at the thought that the horse-boys' tending of the Fords had cleared the road for Saruman's siege equipment.

The river was higher now than it had been a week before, on the day when Mauhúr's company had fought here. Today the water in places reached to above Mauhúr's knees. Though his fellows grumbled and cursed as water came nigh to slopping into their cart, for his part he revelled in their brief passage across the river. The water's crisp bite against his legs was a welcome contrast to the heavy warmth of the air.

Giving further proof of the river's swollen height, today they could not even see the three lines of stepping stones leading out to the small, bare island. On this day the stepping stones could give no aid to fastidious travellers seeking to cross without wetting their feet.

 _But on this day,_ Mauhúr thought with a grin, _any fastidious travellers would have a good deal more than wet feet to trouble them._

As they pulled the waggon past the island, five dark, sleek vultures eyed the passing army with undisturbed aplomb from atop the corpses of horse-boys and horses on which they perched.

Shoving the waggon-load of ladders up the slope of the opposite bank looked as though it would be no fun at all. The warriors of the Five Villages grudgingly awaited their turn amidst the crowds, to shift their waggon onto the road itself.

South of Isen the army marched onward, Whiteskin corpses continuing to dot their path. To the west of the road, at a spot about three furlongs south of the river, the Men of Rohan had sought to hold their ground. Against an outcropping of boulders that guarded their backs, the Rohirrim warriors had formed a shield-wall. And there their bodies lay, a line of twenty Men at the least, shoulder-to-shoulder, cut down where they had stood.

There was no way of knowing how many other Men of that shield-wall might have broken and fled. But these who had not fled deserved honour and renown.

Mauhúr wondered if, when the coming battles were ended, any of these Men's comrades would live to sing of their deeds. He thought that perhaps he should compose a song in their praise himself, even though he knew none of their names.

A scant way further south along the road, they passed the scattered wreckage of a camp of the Rohirrim. Few bodies lay there, and nothing that could be plundered. The vanguard of Isengard's army, and all who had crossed this ground in the hours since combat ended, had picked the place clean of any loot worth the lifting. All that remained was the shredded remnants of tents, their fabric the same dark green as that of the horse-boys' banners.

When they had left the last traces of battle behind them, Mauhúr felt the full strength of an emotion he had sought to ignore since the moment he saw their comrades fallen at the Fords.

He asked himself, _Can there be any sight more desolate than the field of a battle in which one has played no part?_

Glory had been won there at the Fords of Isen, this day in the darkness before dawn. Uruk-Hai and Men alike had fought with honour. And on this day, none of the glory and none of the honour had been his.

The army of Saruman, he realized, had followed the very strategy he had thought they should adopt. A rapid strike force of horse-cavalry, Warg Riders and running Uruk-Hai made up the army's vanguard, and this vanguard had won the passage of the fords. By their deeds they had hurled the Men of Rohan into destruction and flight—while the warriors of the Five Villages had been plodding along the road, hours behind them.

He thought of the words General Wulfgar had spoken in his office. "A regiment which allows itself to be all-but wiped out has no further claim to be called an elite troop."

 _We would have been there!_ Mauhúr thought. _We would have been there, were it not for the battle at the knoll. If Uglúk and the others had lived, our regiment would have been among the army's vanguard this day._

Saruman had known Uglúk and had relied upon him. For three decades, as Uglúk had said when he left home for the last time, Uglúk's regiment had been the spear that Saruman chose when his aim most needed to prove true.

Mauhúr thought, _That spear is broken now._

For a moment he felt bitterly akin to the old, crippled warriors left at home with the wives and children when their fellows marched forth to war.

Angrily he snarled in his thoughts, _Idiot! What are you whingeing about? You are not blind or incapable of walking. You are not dead! Because you must wait a few hours longer for battle, is that cause to wallow in sorrow for the glory you think you have lost?_

 _You are acting like some pampered Tark princeling. You must wait a little longer before playing with your favoured toys, and so you run to your nursemaid so that she may kiss your disappointment away._

The words were like something his father would have said. They were so like, that for one instant Mauhúr asked himself if Uglúk truly _had_ said it.

 _No,_ his thoughts answered. _Just because it sounded like something Father would say, that does not mean it was a message from him._

He knew the difference between the sound of his own thoughts, and the sound of a message from Uglúk.

 _Before Saruman came to us at the eaves of the forest, the voice in my mind then was Uglúk's. It could be no other. Just now, the voice in my thoughts was no other than my own._

The warriors about him had spread out farther from each other, once the ground again grew level as they left the Isen and its battlefields behind. Jaddain was away to Mauhúr's left, still working as one of the crew hauling the waggon with its dozen siege ladders. Mauhúr still walked shoulder-to-shoulder with Lugdush, but for the moment their other companions were farther from them; far enough away that he and Lugdush could hold a more-or-less private conversation.

"Lugdush," he began. He strove not to sound as hesitating as he felt. "There is something I've wished to ask you."

The old warrior studied him in curiosity. "Ask."

"You know my father spoke to me, after his death."

Lugdush solemnly nodded. "I know it. When he warned us the White Hand was coming for our report."

"I have wanted to ask …" Impatiently he told himself just to spit it out. "Did you ever hear your father speak to you, after he was dead?"

At first Lugdush seemed surprised at the question. Then, quietly, he chuckled. "Well, yes. I think I did. Once. It was a strange thing, though. It was a damned strange thing."

He shook his head, and he held silent for many a step. "You never knew my father, of course. The way he was with me, the way I knew him … he was the soul of practicality. Never spoke of anything but to the purpose. Never spoke of his hopes or his dreams, never went on any flights of fancy; never even spoke about the things that he liked. He just did what he had to do, and he told me what I had to do. He got on with it, and he expected me to do the same."

Mauhúr listened without comment as their army trudged on.

"But then, a few days after he had died … well, I did get one thought message from him. Or I was pretty certain I did. It was his voice; I was sure of that. It sounded just the same way it always did. But the thing he said, if it _was_ him … It was like nothing I'd ever heard him say.

"The weather had been dry for weeks, you see, but a rain was just starting. You know how it smells when rain hits dry soil; that sweet, dusty smell that rises all around you as you see those first raindrops dotting the ground. It was raining like that, and I smelled that smell, and that's when I heard my father's voice.

"I thought I heard my father say, 'I've always loved the smell of rain on dry ground.' And that was it. That was his one message. That was the one damned thing my slain father ever bothered to say to me."

Lugdush shook his head again. "And I still don't know for sure if he really said that to me or not. Because why would he? Why would he say _that_ of all things, after he was dead? He never said anything like that to me when he was alive. My father never told me about one damned thing that he liked! I don't even know if he loved the smell of rain on dry ground, or if he hated it!

" _I've_ always liked that smell, though," Lugdush continued ruefully. "So maybe that was just my own thought, and somehow I fooled myself into believing it was my father's voice. But why would I do that to myself? Why would I hear that thought in his voice instead of mine?"

Lugdush smiled over at Mauhúr, not seeming to expect any answer to his questions. "It makes sense that you got a more helpful message from your father. Uglúk would make damned certain he sent a message that would help his son—not just some weird comment on the smell of dust in the rain."

Mauhúr could think of one interpretation by which the weird comment had been something Lugdush's father _did_ believe his son should hear. But he did not think it was his place to speak of it. Either Lugdush had thought of that interpretation himself, at some point over all these years, or he had not. Either way, it was not Mauhúr's place to suggest that Lugdush's father had regretted never sharing his feelings with his son—that he had wanted Lugdush to know there was something both of them loved, before he lost the chance for them to share anything at all.

Mauhúr said, hating to speak the words, "You heard from your father only once. Then, do you think … Do you think that's all that normally happens? Do you think I won't be hearing from Uglúk again?"

Lugdush furiously scowled at his younger fellow officer. "No, I do _not_ think that, Mauhúr Son of Uglúk. You and he are … you are closer than ever I was with my father. You mean more to each other. You always have. I think you will hear from him again, if Uglúk knows of anything he believes you need to know."

 _Oh, good,_ Mauhúr thought, as he swallowed away the sorrow that welled for a moment in his throat. _So maybe my father will explain to me Sergilel's warning about those trees that walk._

As the day advanced, dark banks of clouds advanced also out of the east. Mauhúr glanced at the clouds marching on the army's left flank, and he smiled.

He thought. _Perhaps a thunderstorm is coming. Perhaps it will chase away this heat and bring fresh, clean air for us to fight in._

On they marched at their strolling pace that gnawed at Mauhúr's endurance. The outliers of the White Mountains loomed before them in the distance like a maddening mirage. Mauhúr did his best not to think of those mountains; not to drive himself to distraction with thoughts of how long it took for their peaks to grow visibly closer.

They were moving into more populous country—or into land that had been more populous, before the present outburst of war.

As was no surprise, considering how far back they were in the midst of their army, every cottage, barn, hall and village that they passed was a smouldering wreck before ever they saw it. For the most part, the stone walls survived. But the turf, thatch and timbers of the roofs had burned and collapsed into the buildings below.

One thing was missing that he had expected to see. No corpses lay scattered about the farmsteads and villages. He saw no bodies of men, women or children; not even those of slaughtered horses or livestock.

 _We knew the straw-heads had evacuated their people from the plains east of Entwash,_ he thought. _Now we know they have done the same here in their lands to the west._

 _And where have they evacuated all of these people to? Perhaps to the very stronghold that we are now marching to assault?_

About the noon a break came in their march: a break at which Mauhúr Son of Uglúk could barely restrain his disgust.

He supposed he should have expected it. With Men amongst them—and with thousands of Cave Uruk-Hai, who wilted in prolonged sunlight—of course they could not hope to march for more than a dozen hours without rest.

The location for this rest-break must have been chosen by someone at the vanguard of their army. It was the first village they had seen in which not one building had been burned.

Presumably the highest-ranking officers had commandeered one building for themselves. Every other structure that boasted a roof was crammed to the point of bursting with sunlight-fleeing Cave Uruk-Hai.

The warriors of the Five Villages and their Warg allies, with no need to shun the sunlight, sat themselves down in the middle of the road, near to a larger building that Mauhúr guessed was the village hall. Their Dynion comrades of the boar banner and the "Saruman's Cock" battering ram did the same, many of them lying down in the road and immediately falling asleep.

Naturally needing far less sleep than Men, Mauhúr and his fellows watched as score upon score of their Cave Uruk-Hai brethren piled into the village hall to get out of the sun. Considering that unknown numbers were likely already inside there before their troop even reached the village, Mauhúr thought it little short of wizardry how many Uruk-Hai could squeeze themselves within those walls.

He was not alone in thinking so. Othorod wondered while gnawing on a strip of jerky, "How deep do you suppose they're stacked up in there? Much more, and they'll need to raise the roof."

At last there came a time when no more could be jammed inside, as the next hopeful arrivals were informed in colourful terms. This next company of Cave Uruk-Hai set up their camp just outside the building, where its eaves gave a few of them some modicum of shade.

The sunlight they so loathed had at least not robbed them of their ingenuity. Mauhúr watched in interest and growing respect as this company rigged themselves impromptu sun-shelters made from shields propped atop of spears.

For three hours at the least, the army of Saruman lolled in that Rohirrim village. Mauhúr unsurprisingly lost interest in watching the Cave Uruk-Hai once they had completed their shelters and started napping. Finally he lay down himself, staring upward at the pallid blue sky and at the wall of storm clouds in the east, rolling slowly ever nearer.

He jumped to his feet at once when the first trumpets and conch shells started blowing. From near and far he heard orders bellowed along the lines of, "Get up! It's time to move." His fellows leapt up all about him, as eager to march again as he was.

Pushing through the crowd toward him came a Khand-Uruk whom Mauhúr had seen by the side of Captain Kharga. Sure enough, this Uruk called out to him, "Kharga says let's leg it. If we move fast enough while folk are still waking up, we can work our way through to near the front of this parade."

"Right," Mauhúr answered. He blew his own conch shell horn. "Uruk-Hai of the Five Villages!" he shouted. "We're moving out!"

With their cart of siege ladders at the fore to clear their way through the milling crowds, they pressed forward along the road. Mauhúr joined in with the others pushing the waggon. At his side, Jaddain jerked a thumb behind them and reported with a grin, "Looks like our artistic Dynion friends are tagging along with us."

"Let them," Mauhúr said. "Why shouldn't they? They've got Saruman's Cock with them, after all. They must be eager to try it out!"

They still could not be said to have a place in the vanguard when the army moved off again, but they had greatly bettered their position. It was now as though they had been among the first regiments to march from Isengard. And suddenly Mauhúr felt light-hearted for the first time in a week of sorrows—the first time since their own battle at the Fords of Isen, seven days before.

Looking about him he saw joyful grins on the faces of his comrades, of the North Khand Regiment, and of their Dynion allies. He knew it was petty of them all to take such pleasure from their to-the-front manoeuvre, but Mauhúr figured they might as well enjoy it.

For his own part he felt an almost giddy smugness. He felt as if all of them were boys who had just pulled off some particularly daring prank.

They still had to walk, not to run. But their pace no longer felt to him as galling as before. The mountains ahead no longer seemed as though they mocked him. He could see them drawing closer now, and he found himself wishing he knew more about the White Mountains of Rohan. He wished he knew enough to call each one of those peaks by its own name.

To the left and behind them still marched the rising wall of thunderclouds. Soon it would overtake them. Mauhúr grinned at the thought that the storm clouds, too, would cut to the forefront of the army, even as he and his comrades had just done.

On they marched. Their steps ate up the miles and the hours. The storm clouds overtook them indeed, racing past onto the army's right flank and rising up as though to swallow the sinking sun.

Red shafts of sunlight sliced through the swelling clouds. Mauhúr saw that light strike the westernmost peaks of the mountains and kindle their tips into flames. He thought the mountain-tops looked like three vast torches. Or perhaps instead they were three spears, their blades crimsoned with the blood of Men.

As the army trooped onward, he squinted into the distance at the land beneath those peaks.

Still some leagues ahead of their present position, the land began to rise. It was a long, slow rise, but if they kept following it on, it would take them at last into the foothills and into the mountains themselves. Crowned by those three peaks he could see a dark cleft, a ravine slicing deep into the mountainside. And below that, he saw other things.

A long, straight line cut athwart the foothills, across what would be their path. He thought it was likely too straight to be a natural cliff. He would wager instead that what he saw there was a wall.

Beyond that wall, further back toward the cleft in the mountains, he saw a tower, made tiny by the distance like a toy castle built for some child of Men.

"Lugdush," he said. "I can see a tower up ahead. Below that cleft; beneath those three peaks. Do you see it?"

"Aye," Lugdush answered him, after a pause. "Aye, I can see it." The old warrior raised his voice and went on. "There it is, lads," he declared. "That's where we're heading. That's the hole where the Rohan-rats are hiding, that we have got to roust them out from. That is Korgan Gorn."

* * *

Author's Note: Definitions

 **Malham ointment:** A particularly strong medicinal and disinfectant ointment used by the Uruk-Hai. Malham is seen at work in Tolkien's chapter "The Uruk-Hai" of _The Two Towers_ , being used by Uglúk to heal the wound on Merry's forehead, as follows: "…he smeared the wound with some dark stuff out of a small wooden box. Merry cried out and struggled wildly…He was healing Merry in orc-fashion, and his treatment worked swiftly…the gash in his forehead gave him no more trouble, but he bore a brown scar to the end of his days."

 **Dynion:** As noted in Chapter Three, this is the name which the so-called "Men of Dunland" or "Dunlendings" use for themselves. "Dynion" refers to the people and "Dynion Gwlad" to their land. Although Tolkien traces the derivation of the word "Dunland" from "dunn" meaning swarthy or dark-haired, the Rohirrim word "Dunlending" may originally have been a mispronunciation/misunderstanding of "Dynion."

 **Forgoil:** According to Tolkien in his Appendix F, "Forgoil" is the name which the Dynion Men "gave to the Rohirrim (meaning Strawheads, it is said.)" However, the context in which the word is used in his chapter "Helm's Deep" of _The Two Towers_ does not necessarily seem to bear this out. The Dynion-Hai are reported to be shouting, "Death to the Forgoil! Death to the Strawheads! Death to the robbers of the north!" From this, it seems uncertain whether Forgoil and Strawheads have the same meaning, or whether they are, in fact, two different terms of abuse used for the same people.

 **Korgan Gorn:** In the language of Mauhúr's people, korgan=fortress or castle and gorn=horn.


End file.
